Interactive temporal digital forensic event analysis

Abstract

Current digital forensic tools and applications lack the capability to visually present high-level system events and their associated low-level traces in a user interpretable form. This chapter describes the Temporal Analysis Integration Management Application (TAIMA), an interactive graphical user interface that renders graph-based information visualizations for digital forensic event reconstruction. By leveraging correlation and abstraction as core functions, TAIMA reduces the manual, labor-intensive efforts needed to conduct timeline analyses during digital forensic examinations. A pilot usability study conducted to evaluate TAIMA supports the claim that correlation and abstraction of low-level events into high-level system events can enhance digital forensic examinations.