MF-Ledger: Blockchain Hyperledger Sawtooth-Enabled Novel and Secure Multimedia Chain of Custody Forensic Investigation Architecture

Abstract

Due to globalization and worldwide connectivity, multimedia data exchange has increased significantly over the Internet in the last decade. The life cycle of multimedia content is also getting more multifaceted as more people are accessing, sharing, modifying and re-using multimedia information. This poses serious challenges for the multimedia industry to provide integrity, reliability and trustworthiness for multimedia investigations against the growing cybersecurity threats. This paper bridges this gap by enabling a secure and transparent digital forensic investigations process using blockchain technology. MF-Ledger a Blockchain Hyperledger sawtooth-enabled novel, secure and efficient digital forensic investigation architecture is proposed where participating stakeholders create a private network to exchange and agree on different investigation activities before being stored on the blockchain ledger. We have created digital contracts (smart contracts) and implemented them using sequence diagrams to handle the stakeholders’ secure interaction in the investigation process. The proposed architectural solution delivers robust information integrity, prevention, and preservation mechanism to permanently and immutably store the evidence (chain of custody) in a private permissioned encrypted blockchain ledger.

Keywords

• Blockchain
• hyperledger sawtooth
• smart contracts
• digital signatures
• digital forensics
• evidence chain of custody