Abstract
With the increasing number of cybercrimes, the digital forensics team has no choice but to implement more robust and resilient evidence-handling mechanisms. The capturing of digital evidence, which is a tangible and probative piece of information that can be presented in court and used in trial, is very challenging due to its volatility and improper handling procedures. When computer systems get compromised, digital forensics comes into play to analyze, discover, extract, and preserve all relevant evidence. Therefore, it is imperative to maintain efficient evidence management to guarantee the credibility and admissibility of digital evidence in a court of law. A critical component of this process is to utilize an adequate chain of custody (CoC) approach to preserve the evidence in its original state from compromise and/or contamination. In this paper, a practical and secure CustodyBlock (CB) model using private blockchain protocol and smart contracts to support the control, transfer, analysis, and preservation monitoring is proposed. The smart contracts in CB are utilized to enhance the model automation process for better and more secure evidence preservation and handling. A further research direction in terms of implementing blockchain-based evidence management ecosystems, and the implications on other different areas, are discussed.
Highlights
Introduction of Custody Evidence FrameworkEvidence management is one of the most important problems in digital forensics.Digital proof plays a vital role in crime investigations because it is used to link persons with their criminal activities
This paper aims to contribute to the discussion about the trend to establish a worldwide standard more suited to maintaining chains of custody throughout the lifecycle of digital evidence, and helps the improvement of new versions of the chain of custody software
This paper aims at addressing the challenges in the forensic evidence collection, preservation, and investigation processes, for Internet of Things (IoT) environments in the smart home domain, by exploiting the novel COC technology along with the CustodyBlock (CB) model using private blockchain protocol, and smart contracts to support the control, transfer, analysis, and preservation monitoring are proposed
Summary
Introduction of Custody Evidence FrameworkEvidence management is one of the most important problems in digital forensics.Digital proof plays a vital role in crime investigations because it is used to link persons with their criminal activities. Chain of custody (CoC) in digital forensics can be defined as a process of documenting and maintaining the chronological history of handling digital evidence [1,2]. This plays an important role in the investigation of digital forensics because it notes every detail of concern to digital evidence through different levels of hierarchy. This goes from the first responder to the higher authorities who were responsible for handling the investigation of cybercrime. Blockchain technology can make various sections of transactions take place
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