Title: Using mobile ad hoc networks to acquire digital evidence from remote autonomous agents

Authors: Indrajit Ray, Nayot Poolsappasit

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, Colorado State University, USA. ' Department of Computer Science, Colorado State University, USA

Abstract: In this work, we report on one aspect of an autonomous digital evidence acquisition system that we are developing. Many a times forensic investigators need to operate autonomous agents remotely to acquire digital evidence. These autonomous systems periodically upload the evidence to a remote central server using a mobile ad hoc network. In such cases, large pieces of information need to be fragmented and transmitted in an appropriate manner. To support proper forensic analysis three properties need to be ensured for each fragment of evidence – confidentiality during communication, authenticity and integrity of the data, and, most importantly, strong evidence of membership for fragments. Here, we describe the framework to provide these features that we have developed as part of a robot based system.

Keywords: digital evidence; authenticity; group communication; membership; information dispersal; byzantine agreement; mobile ad hoc networks; mobile networks; network forensics; remote autonomous agents; confidentiality; data integrity; mobile robots; MANETs; evidence acquisition; digital forensics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSN.2008.017221

International Journal of Security and Networks, 2008 Vol.3 No.2, pp.80 - 94

Published online: 19 Feb 2008 *

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