A Review on the Internet of Things (IoT) Forensics: Challenges, Techniques, and Evaluation of Digital Forensic Tools

Abstract

Recently, the exponential growth of Internet of Things (IoT) network-connected devices has resulted in the exchange of large amounts of data via a smart grid. This extensive connection between IoT devices results in numerous security breaches and violations. Due to the increasing prevalence of IoT-related cybercrimes, forensic investigators and researchers face numerous obstacles when attempting to recover evidence from a variety of different types of IoT smart devices. The primary challenge in performing forensic analysis on the IoT is the heterogeneity of IoT devices. Additionally, the bulk of IoT devices has flash memory or limited memory, which makes generating and converting evidence for presenting forensic data in court problematic. This review paper presents several forensic methodologies, techniques, and challenges in IoT device forensics, a comprehensive review of prominent recent works, with an overview of tools that are frequently used for performing digital forensics investigations. Additionally, a comparative analysis of three popular digital forensic tools is also conducted.