Journal of Information Systems and Informatics
Vol 8 No 5 (2026): October

Forensic Reconstruction of Web-Based Social Media Account Takeover via Credential Phishing

Zulki Yanto Rivai (Universitas Ahmad Dahlan)
Anton Yudhana (Universitas Ahmad Dahlan)
Imam Riadi (Universitas Ahmad Dahlan)



Article Info

Publish Date
24 Oct 2026

Abstract

Credential phishing against browser-authenticated accounts can produce fragmented digital traces across browser storage, phishing infrastructure, network traffic, and account activity records. This study aims to reconstruct a Discord Web account takeover caused by credential phishing through multi-source forensic correlation. Evidence was obtained from Chrome browser artifacts, phishing server logs, Wireshark network captures, and documentation of attacker-side account activity within a controlled experimental scenario. The forensic analysis recovered 10 of 12 expected artifacts, resulting in an Artifact Recovery Rate (ARR) of 83.3%, while 4 of 6 incident stages were supported by at least two evidence items or source layers, producing an Evidence Corroboration Score (ECS) of 66.7%. The reconstructed timeline covers six stages of the incident, from the delivery of a phishing link to the confirmation of account access. The study introduces ARR and ECS as quantitative measures for evaluating artifact recovery and cross-source evidence corroboration. The findings further demonstrate that browser artifacts alone are insufficient to establish a complete account takeover sequence, and that correlation among browser, server, network, and account activity evidence is necessary to construct a coherent and verifiable forensic timeline. These results provide a practical basis for incident responders and forensic examiners to correlate heterogeneous evidence sources when investigating browser-mediated credential phishing.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

isi

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT

Description

Journal-ISI is a scientific article journal that is the result of ideas, great and original thoughts about the latest research and technological developments covering the fields of information systems, information technology, informatics engineering, and computer science, and industrial engineering ...