Study and development of an autopsy module for automated analysis of image metadata

Abstract

The importance of cybersecurity is raising every day with the development of new technologies. Accordingly, cybercrimes are increasing notably and more than ever qualified people is needed to protect the rest of people from these type of infractions. Digital forensics is a very important part of the cybersecurity world, furthermore, the ultimate goal of a digital forensics investigation is to preserve, identify, acquire and document digital evidence to be used in the court of law. As a result, our paper will go in deep with the Digital Forensics field, especially with the analysis of image metadata employing the most important software used by digital forensics investigators: Autopsy. Nowadays, Autopsy cannot extract and analyze all type of metadata found in pictures, but thankfully to this paper, investigators will not be forced to run another external software only to analyze image metadata; they will be able to do it withAutopsy.