IoT forensics: Amazon Echo as a use case

Li, Shancang; Choo, Kim-Kwang Raymond; Sun, Qindong; Buchanan, William J.; Cao, Jiuxin

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) are increasingly common in our society, and can be found in civilian settings as well as sensitive applications, such as battlefields and national security. Given the potential of these devices to be targeted by attackers, they are a valuable source in digital forensic investigations. In addition, incriminating evidence may be stored on an IoT device (e.g., Amazon Echo in a home environment and Fitbit worn by the victim or an accused person). In comparison to IoT security and privacy literature, IoT forensics is relatively under-studied. IoT forensics is also challenging in practice, particularly due to the complexity, diversity, and heterogeneity of IoT devices and ecosystems. In this paper, we present an IoT-based forensic model that supports the identification, acquisition, analysis, and presentation of potential artifacts of forensic interest from IoT devices and the underpinning infrastructure. Specifically, we use the popular Amazon Echo as a use case to demonstrate how our proposed model can be used to guide forensics analysis of IoT devices.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 15, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Mar 22, 2019
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Mar 25, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 1, 2019
• Journal: IEEE Internet of Things
• Electronic ISSN: 2327-4662
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 6487-6497
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2019.2906946
• Keywords: digital forensics, Internet of Things, IoT forensics, Amazon Echo forensics
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/850273
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2019.2906946
• Additional Information: Additional Information : (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.
• Contract Date: Apr 1, 2019