Open source forensics for a multi-platform drone system

Abstract

Drones or UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles) have a great potential to cause concerns over privacy, trespassing and safety. This is due to the increasing availability of drones and their capabilities of travelling large distances and taking high resolution photographs and videos. From a criminological perspective, drones are an ideal method of smuggling, physically removing the operator from the act. It is for this reason that drones are also being utilised as deadly weapons in conflict areas. The need for forensic research to successfully analyse captured drones is rising. The challenges that drones present include the need to interpret flight data and tackling the multi-platform nature of drone systems. This paper reports the extraction and interpretation of important artefacts found in the recorded flight logs on both the internal memory of the UAV and the controlling application, as well as analysis of media, logs and other important files for identifying artefacts. In addition, some basic scripts will be utilised to demonstrate the potential for developing fully fledged forensics tools applicable to other platforms. Tests of anti-forensics measures will also be reported.