A PERMISSIONED BLOCKCHAIN-BASED MODEL FOR DIGITAL FORENSICS

2023-8-24
Alizadeh Saveh, Niloufar
Securing data from malicious activities, particularly within the digital forensics process, is a critical challenge in the current digital world. Digital evidence in digital forensics plays a vital role since it identifies the nature of criminal activity. Then, we can present the cause of the incident in court. Consequently, digital evidence volatility and sensitivity require high security and sophisticated management to ensure consistency and trustworthiness. Therefore, we need to provide a confidential environment for preserving integrity and reliability within digital forensics. This thesis proposes a permissioned blockchain-based model; hence we implement the Avalanche blockchain. The Avalanche blockchain ensures security using cryptographic primitives, such as cryptographic hash functions and the digital signature. It also establishes a reliable structure through its optimized consensus mechanism. Moreover, all activities are entirely transparent and accountable since Avalanche blockchain uses a distributed ledger. We use the Avalanche Subnet-EVM and a custom genesis file to establish a permissioned blockchain where only authorized participants can join the network. Then, participants verify the block through the Snowman consensus protocol in less than two seconds to maintain reliability. Moreover, we simply store the cryptographic hash of digital evidence in the blockchain to save space and provide integrity instead of storing the whole digital data. By implementing our proposed design, we can manage a tremendous amount of digital evidence and provide a model with integrity, confidentiality, and reliability for digital forensics.
Citation Formats
N. Alizadeh Saveh, “A PERMISSIONED BLOCKCHAIN-BASED MODEL FOR DIGITAL FORENSICS,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2023.