Remote upload of evidence over mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

In this work, we report on one aspect of an autonomous robot-based digital evidence acquisition system that we are developing. When forensic investigators operate within a hostile environment they may use remotely operated unmanned devices to gather digital evidence. These 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, certain properties must ensured for each fragment of evidence - confidentiality during communication, authenticity and integrity of the data, and, most importantly, strong evidence of membership for fragments. This paper describes a framework to provide these properties for the robot-based evidence acquisition system under development.