Smart vehicle forensics: Challenges and case study

Vehicles are fast becoming another important source of digital evidence in a criminal investigation. Traditionally, when a vehicle is involved in a crime scene (e.g. drink driving) or a terrorist attack, the investigators focus on the acquisition of DNA, fingerprints and other identifying materials that are usually non digital in nature. However, modern-day cars, particularly smart or driverless cars, store a wealth of digital information, such as recent destinations, favorite locations, routes, and personal data (e.g. call logs, contact lists, SMS messages, pictures, and videos). In this paper, we describe some of the challenges associated with vehicle data forensics, which is an understudied area. Next, we present our case studies on forensic acquisition and data analysis of an entertainment system on a Volkswagen car. We also discuss potential hardware and software solutions that can be used to acquire forensic artifacts from such vehicles. Finally, we describe and analyze the mobile data traffic from an Audi car, a VW car and a BMW car. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.