Next-generation Digital Forensics Challenges and Evidence Preservation Framework for IoT Devices

The proliferation of the Internet of Things devices in today’s environment generates huge amount of information about users and surroundings. Data produced by IoT devices attracts cybercriminals to perform malicious activity. The technologies like cloud and fog computing are emerging as the next-generation infrastructure for Internet of Things which may be challenging for digital investigation. In this paper, IoT and fog-based frameworks for digital forensics of IoT devices are explained and tools used in different levels of IoT such as physical level, cloud level, network level, and mobile application level are briefly discussed. The process of evidence collection and challenges in IoT forensics paradigms are well studied. For securing the extracted artifacts IoT evidence preservation framework is proposed (IoT-EvPF). Furthermore, the forensic challenges in a cloud computing environment and anti-forensics techniques used by cybercriminals to hide their identity and malicious activity are discussed. We have identified research gaps and provided a framework to encourage more thought and conversation about the difficulties of retrieving digital evidence from Fog Computing systems.