Advanced Techniques for Reconstruction of Incomplete Network Data

Network forensics is a method of obtaining and analyzing digital evidences from network sources. Network forensics includes data acquisition, selection, processing, analysis and presentation to investigators. Due to high volumes of transmitted data the acquired information can be incomplete, corrupted, or disordered which makes further reconstruction difficult. In this paper, we address the issue of advanced parsing and reconstruction of incomplete, corrupted, or disordered data packets. We introduce a technique that recovers TCP or UDP conversations so they could be further analyzed by application parsers. Presented technique is implemented in a new network forensic tool called Netfox Detective. We also discuss current challenges in parsing web mail communication, SSL decryption and Bitcoins detection.