The Application of Blockchain of Custody in Criminal Investigation Process

Abstract

With the advancing technologies become tools for illicit activities and avoid detection, digital forensics is necessary for law enforcement in modern criminal investigations. In order to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the evidence, a chain of custody is essential for the successful prosecution of criminals in court. However, it is a great challenge to manage the preservation and collection of digital evidence because of its fragile and volatile in nature. Blockchain has been proposed as a promising and reliable technology to provide immutability and traceability of digital content, however, the applications of blockchain to the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) requires special attention to the security issue. In this research, we proposed a blockchain of custody framework to facilitate the security and transparency of digital evidence in criminal investigation process. The framework is implement on Ethereum smart contract to support authenticity and integrity of digital evidence in preliminary investigation, case management and court phases. We also propose the role of investigator to leverage access control in evidence creation, transferring and modification. The corresponding actions with judicial process is simulated using private ethereum blockchain. The experimental results indicate that the proposed framework can prevent digital evidence been tampered or contaminated and assure its legal defensibility with rigorous privilege management. Moreover, by successfully synchronizing digital evidence transactions to multiple nodes ensures the accountability of evidence data for every involved law enforcement agency.