Abstract
Carrying capabilities of drones and their easy accessibility to public have led to an increase in crimes committed using drones in recent years. For this reason, the need for forensic analysis of drones captured from the crime scenes and the devices used for these drones is also paramount. This paper presents the extraction and identification of important artefacts from the recorded flight data as well as the associated mobile devices using open source tools and some basic scripts developed to aid the analysis of two popular drone systems- the DJI Phantom 3 Professional and Parrot AR. Drone 2.0. Although different drones vary in their operations, this paper extends the extraction and analysis of the data from the drones and associated devices using some generic methods which are forensically sound adhering to the guidelines of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).
References
ACPO. (2012). ACPO Good Practice Guide ACPO Good Practice Guide for Digital Evidence for Digital Evidence.
Android. (2017). Android Debug Bridge (adb) | Android Studio. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb.html
Azhar, M. A. H. Bin, & Barton, T. E. A. (2016). Forensic Analysis of Secure Ephemeral Messaging Applications on Android Platforms (pp. 27–41). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51064-4_3
Barrett, D. (2015). Burglars use drone helicopters to target homes - Telegraph. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11613568/Burglars-use-drone-helicopters-to-identify-targe-homes.html
Barton, T. E. A., & Azhar, M. A. H. Bin. (2018). Open Source Forensics for a Multi-platform Drone System (pp. 83–96). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73697-6_6
BBC. (2016). Big rise in drone jail smuggling incidents - BBC News. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35641453
CAA. (2015). Airspace restrictions for unmanned aircraft and drones | UK Civil Aviation Authority. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraft/Our-role/Airspace-restrictions-for-unmanned-aircraft-and-drones/
Carrier, B. (2002). Open Source Digital Forensics Tools: The Legal Argument.
Csv. (2017). CsvView Downloads. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://datfile.net/CsvView/downloads.html
CyanogenMod. (2017). CyanogenMod android operating system. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://github.com/CyanogenMod
Dinan, S. (2017). Mexican drug cartels using drones to smuggle heroin, meth, cocaine into U.S. - Washington Times. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/20/mexican-drug-cartels-using-drones-to-smuggle-heroi/
DJI. (2018). Phantom 3 Professional - Specs, FAQ, Tutorials, Downloads and DJI GO - DJI. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.dji.com/phantom-3-pro/info#specs
Gartner. (2018). Gartner Says Worldwide Sales of Smartphones Recorded First Ever Decline During the Fourth Quarter of 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3859963
gnuplot. (2017). gnuplot tool. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from http://www.gnuplot.info/download.html
Hambling, D. (2017). Islamic State Now Using Off-the-Shelf Drones | Defense content from Aviation Week. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from http://aviationweek.com/defense/islamic-state-s-new-weapon-choice-shelf-drones
Horsman, G. (2016). Unmanned aerial vehicles: A preliminary analysis of forensic challenges. Digital Investigation, 16, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.DIIN.2015.11.002
Jain, U., Rogers, M., & Matson, E. T. (2017). Drone forensic framework: Sensor and data identification and verification. In 2017 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS) (pp. 1–6). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/SAS.2017.7894059
Karlsson, K.-J., & Glisson, W. B. (2014). Android Anti-forensics: Modifying CyanogenMod. In 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 4828–4837). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2014.593
Kernel. (2009). Linux_2_6_32 - Linux Kernel Newbies. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_32
KingoApp. (2017). KingoRoot APK, the Best One-Click Android Root app for free. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://root-apk.kingoapp.com/
Kovar, D., Dominguez, G., & Murphy, C. (2015). UAV (aka drone) Forensics, 7.
Lee, C., Sim, D., Hwang, J.-Y., Cho, S., Development, S. / W., & Business, T. M. (2015). F2FS: A New File System for Flash Storage.
Luo, A. (2016). Drones Hijacking. Defcon.
Maarse, M., Sangers, L., Ginkel, J. Van, & Pouw, M. (2016). Digital forensics on a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ UAV.
Majendie, A., & Chia, K. (2018). The Future of Flying Is All About Drones - Bloomberg. Retrieved 16 March 2018, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/in-the-global-game-of-hide-and-seek-the-drones-are-winning
Mikelionis, L. (2018). Drug cartels using drones to smuggle drugs at border. Fox News.
Moskwa, W. (2016). World Drone Market Seen Nearing $127 Billion in 2020, PwC Says - Bloomberg. Retrieved 16 March 2018, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-09/world-drone-market-seen-nearing-127-billion-in-2020-pwc-says
Parrot. (2017). Quadcopter AR Drone 2.0 Power Edition | Parrot Store Official. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.parrot.com/uk/drones/parrot-ardrone-20-power-edition#parrot-ardrone-20-power-edition-details
Pleban, J.-S., Band, R., & Creutzburg, R. (2014). Hacking and securing the AR.Drone 2.0 quadcopter: Investigations for improving the security of a toy. In R. Creutzburg & D. Akopian (Eds.) (Vol. 9030, p. 90300L). International Society for Optics and Photonics. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2044868
Siddique, H. (2017). Drone complaints soar as concerns grow over snooping | Technology | The Guardian. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/03/drone-complaints-soar-as-concerns-grow-over-snooping
Trujano, F., Chan, B., Beams, G., & Rivera, R. (2016). Security Analysis of DJI Phantom 3 Standard.
UAV. (2018). Tarot T-18 Ready To Fly Drone | UAV Systems International. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.uavsystemsinternational.com/product/tarot-t-18-ready-fly-drone/
Valentak, Z. (2017). Drone market share analysis & predictions for 2018 - DJI dominates, Parrot and Yuneec slowly catching up - DronesGlobe.com. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from http://www.dronesglobe.com/news/drone-market-share-analysis-predictions-2018/
Waters, N. (2017). bellingcat - Death From Above: The Drone Bombs of the Caliphate - bellingcat. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/02/10/death-drone-bombs-caliphate/
Yeung, P. (2016). Drone reports to UK police soar 352% in a year amid urgent calls for regulation | The Independent. Retrieved 16 March 2018, from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/drones-police-crime-reports-uk-england-safety-surveillance-a7155076.html
Zanero, S., & Huebner, E. (2010). The Case for Open Source Software in Digital Forensics. In Open Source Software for Digital Forensics (pp. 3–7). Boston, MA: Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5803-7_1
Recommended Citation
Azhar, M A Hannan Bin; Barton, Thomas Edward Allen; and Islam, Tasmina
(2018)
"Drone Forensic Analysis Using Open Source Tools,"
Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law: Vol. 13
, Article 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15394/jdfsl.2018.1513
Available at:
https://commons.erau.edu/jdfsl/vol13/iss1/6