Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Forensics: The Good, The Bad, and the Unaddressed

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used for a variety of purposes including taking photographs and videos of large areas, undertaking environmental surveys, as well as conducting military operations. The growing use and functionality of UAVs increases the chances that a digital forensics investigation of a UAV could be required to investigate an accident, incident or just the appearance of a UAV in a specific geographical location. As a result, both industry and academia have published a number of guidelines and publications concerning the forensic investigation of UAV systems. The focus of this paper is the academic perspective of UAV forensics. Specifically, we present a systematic survey of the UAV forensics literature, with the purpose of identifying and documenting research trends describing the digital forensic investigation of UAV incidents, accidents and crimes. The findings from the survey identify the need for an enhanced digital forensics framework to help guide future UAV investigations, as well as a number of research themes that are currently unaddressed in the literature. The research contributions are three-fold. First, the paper categorizes, through a taxonomy, previous UAV forensics literature concerning UAV forensics artifacts, frameworks and models for undertaking UAV forensic investigations, forensic readiness for UAVs, and tools that have been used to conduct UAV forensic investigations. Second, using the findings from the literature, we propose and describe the Conceptual Drone Forensic Framework (CDFF), which attempts to address shortcomings in previous UAV forensics models and frameworks. Third, the paper sets the foundation for future research in UAV forensics by proposing three unaddressed research themes that could help enhance future UAV forensic investigations.