Forensic challenges regarding the Internet of Things

Abstract

The Internet of Things brings many benefits to our society, but its advantages come with a price, namely with a huge opportunity for those who want to commit cybercrime. To fight against this kind of criminality, investigators must use appropriate methods. The Forensics of the Internet of Things (IoT) has evolved from “traditional” Digital Forensics, and includes, among other activities, the identification of the devices related to a certain crime, collecting the digital evidence in a form which can be used in front of the judicial bodies, the analysis, and the extraction of all possible information from the collected data, and the preservation of the evidence. The Forensics of IoT must face specific issues, mainly generated by the extraordinary large number of IoT devices and by the great diversity of these devices. An important problem is that data analysis is very difficult to perform, because of different data formats used by the components of IoT. In the forensic investigations related to the IoT, an important concern refers to privacy protection. Overall, IoT Forensics is a challenging field, but we must search for suitable solutions, because ensuring security for IoT is a very important aim.