Digital Forensics and the Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Report

This report delves into the evolving field of digital forensics within the Internet of Things (IoT). It addresses the challenges posed by the increasing interconnection of smart devices, cloud computing, and various technologies like RFID. The report provides a detailed overview of previous works focusing on sensor modules, processing, and communication within the IoT. It highlights the need for a new digital forensics project that emphasizes pre-investigation phases and real-time elements. The report discusses the importance of secured chain of custody and the preservation of evidence, especially in the context of cloud forensics. It also examines the sources of threats, including node tampering and compromised nodes, and proposes an investigative framework to address the rapid growth of IoT. The report concludes with recommendations for securing IoT devices and systems, emphasizing the importance of digital forensics for criminal investigations and evidence collection. It underscores the significance of analyzing data from smart devices and sensors, and addresses the privacy concerns related to data collection and usage by companies and government organizations. The study provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of IoT forensics and future directions.

report

Summary
The assignment deals about the Diamond affair which is the major part for the situation. It
includes the allocation of the resources to the forensics department. The recommendations are
based on the potential and the importance of the future investigations where the research has
been done on the IoT (Internet of Things) Forensics. The implementation of the interconnection
of smart devices with open companies, government agencies and the individual consumers for
the entire world of the useful applications.

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Previous Works................................................................................................................................2
New Digital Forensics Project.........................................................................................................4
Conclusions and Recommendations................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
In the present world, the digital forensics are developing the solution to the problems, where the
focus is on IoT that has a RFID sensor networks. The different IoTware has the appliances, tags
and the medical devices which are the major source of evidence at the time of investigation. The
challenges in investigating the IoT crime works over the cloud computing, mobile devices,
computers and tablets and RFID technologies (Meffert et al., 2017). The IOT encompass with
hardware and software that provide the communication between the smart devices and the
external world. The evidence is based on including cloud, social networks and the ISP and
mobile network providers with virtual online identities.
Previous Works
The previous research has been mainly in the IoT which focus on the applications of the sensor
module, processing, actuation, communication and the energy modules. It works on the entities
with enabling the sense of local conditions in the environment with controlled sensing and event-
driving sensing. The processing module works over the system of sensors and application where
the processing of data and information is received from sensors and transmit them. From the
previous works that have been done in the Internet of Things, the existence, sense of self and
connectivity works over the identity with objects that can handle the data, decide and act
autonomously (Zia et al., 2017). The scalability includes the quantity of IoT devices which are
associated with the global information network where the schemes are accessible to the security
setup that is a challenging mission as well. To merge with the IoT technology, the reviewing of
the gaps is mainly identified with emphasizing the pre-investigation process and the real-time
elements for the IoT contexts.

The cloud forensics is important for the reinforcement of cybersecurity with the data generated
by the IoT components and is stored on the cloud mainly due to the scalability, capacity and the
convenience. The continued growth of the IoT has been mainly to investigate the related
incidents with addressing the security concerns to verify and leverage the physical and digital
evidence (Kebande et al., 2016). The IoT forensics also focus on the network connectivity, data
analytics, security with the cyber and the physical setup, management and automation,
application platform. The sources of threats are depending upon the misbehaving users where the
focus is on the technology about the users and revealing the same to the outsiders. The attacks in
IoT works over the node tampering and node compromised factors which includes the sabotage
where the attackers try to prevent the base station from receiving the actual readings from the
sensor networks. The investigative framework is about the rapid growth of the technology which
includes that there is a need to work over the dedicated hardware based or the software based
systems which will help in easy investigation. The secured chain of custody is important to make
sure of the processes through the investigation process.
With the granularity and semantics of the evidence from IoT, the focus is on the preservation
issues which relates to the conventional computing environment. The approach is extended to the
digital preservation orders from the contaminated or the overwritten forms by reducing the
resolution at which the data in the devices is being captures (Nieto et al., 2016). The financial
standards are set to consider the aggregated data which may breach mainly the data privacy
legislation with the holders of the data interfering information about the individuals. With this,
the focus is also on the aggregation offences that are alleged for the taken place. The aggregation
of the data provides the possibility of interring the useful information with introducing the
challenges related to the semantic gap (Zia et al., 2017).

New Digital Forensics Project
As per the research, the preparation of the forensic readiness is mainly at the time of pre-
investigation phase and adopting the real-time elements. The pre-investigation phase is important
for the check on the incidents with preparing, acquisition, and for evaluating the processes. It
works on the management readiness with preparing the plan and the tools, techniques and
operations to support the investigation (Khan, 2016). The monitoring and obtaining the
authorisation process is through recruiting the main power with proper training. The real-time
approach for the automatic investigation includes the accommodation of issues with real time
constraints. The detection mechanism is set with the memory and the storage requirement, time
synchronisation and the communication. IoT works over handling the memory and the storage
capacity to accommodate the excessive processing the memory requirements and the timing
characteristics. They are important for the strong and stable communication which is important
to make sure of the potential evidence to extract the information. The identification and the
preservation of evidence is based on handling the identified preservation with modification,
creation and accessing the time of files. (Conti et al., 2017)

The challenge is posed by the devices which includes the emphasis of investigations on the
devices or the data. The IoT forensics are set with the transferring and aggregation of the data or
evidence when securing the chain of evidence. The preservation of the scenes is related to the
IoT investigations that undergo the analysis related to the data at the time scene. The interaction
between the IoT and the cloud computing mainly facilitate the aggregation and the data
processing which has been generated by the large scale distributed cloud environments. This also
includes the barriers or the issues related to the proprietary devices to interface or set with the
cloud computing platforms where the scale, distribution and the remote nature of the data is
precluded with the imaging of the viable extraction process. The IoT application and services
include the network forensics, device level forensic and the cloud forensics which includes the
analysis and the challenges related to the locations, relationship, timings and the data. It is
important to focus on the distributed, aggregated, processed or the by-products of the human

device with the focus over the operating systems, interface and the data formats (Nieto et al.,
2016).
The IoT works over the large-scale source of the potential evidence where the IoT devices are
distributed, aggregated and processed with the challenges. The processes are set for the Contiki
open source OS for the IoT which could be used for the test beds.
The digital forensics are important for the recovery, investigation and the data interpretation
which includes the detection and the proper challenges related to the complexities and the
instabilities of the system. This includes the forms where the data is transferred and could be
consumed by the local network of things. The analysis of data is mainly to include the evidences
which are reliable and authentic (Teing et al., 2017). From the intelligent control to the
advancement of the city management systems, the devices interconnect and communicate with
each other. They can work over providing the proper access to the use of larger amount of the
personal and the sensitive data.

Conclusions and Recommendations
IoT is one of the booming technology which is mainly for securing the devices and the systems.
The work on the mobility is for the IoT which works on achieving the goals and work over the
different industry and the academia. The criminal investigation and the evidence collection in the
realm of the cyber security helps in getting all the valuable ideas for the work. The evidence is
collected from the smart devices and the sensors, where the hardware and the software can
provide a better communication between the smart devices which includes the traditional
computer forensics. The group includes the cloud, social network, ISP and the mobile network
providers for the online identities and the internet connection.
The future work focus on the results where the smart home IoT device works over the hub, and
the cookies. The data is analysed with proper collection and storing of the information, where the
privacy of the users is the important issue. The companies like Google and the government
organisations need to access the data where they may violate the user’s privacy and make use of
the data for their profit. Hence, the IoT security is important where the digital forensics are used
for working over the security issues.

References
Meffert, C., Clark, D., Baggili, I., & Breitinger, F. (2017, August). Forensic State Acquisition
from Internet of Things (FSAIoT): A general framework and practical approach for IoT
forensics through IoT device state acquisition. In Proceedings of the 12th International
Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (p. 56). ACM.
Khan, S. (2016). The Role of Forensics in the Internet of Things: Motivations and
Requirements. Newsletter, 2016.
Conti, M., Dehghantanha, A., Franke, K., & Watson, S. (2018). Internet of Things security and
forensics: Challenges and opportunities.
Nieto, A., Roman, R., & Lopez, J. (2016). Digital Witness: Digital Evidence Management
Framework for the Internet of Things.
Teing, Y. Y., Dehghantanha, A., Choo, K. K. R., & Yang, L. T. (2017). Forensic investigation of
P2P cloud storage services and backbone for IoT networks: BitTorrent Sync as a case
study. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 58, 350-363.
Kebande, V. R., & Ray, I. (2016, August). A generic digital forensic investigation framework for
internet of things (iot). In Future Internet of Things and Cloud (FiCloud), 2016 IEEE 4th
International Conference on (pp. 356-362). IEEE.
Zia, T., Liu, P., & Han, W. (2017, August). Application-Specific Digital Forensics Investigative
Model in Internet of Things (IoT). In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference
on Availability, Reliability and Security (p. 55). ACM.
Nieto, A., Rios, R., & Lopez, J. (2017, August). A Methodology for Privacy-Aware IoT-
Forensics. In Trustcom/BigDataSE/ICESS, 2017 IEEE (pp. 626-633). IEEE.

Appendices