An investigation into Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) forensics: Data extraction & analysis

Recent developments of drone technologies have shown a surge of commercial sales of drone devices, which have found use in many industries. However, the technology has been misused to commit crimes such as drug trafficking, robberies, and terror attacks. The digital forensics industry must match the speed of development with forensic tools and techniques. However, it has been identified that there is a lack of an agreed framework for the extraction and analysis of drone devices and a lack of support in commercial digital forensics tools available. In this research, an investigation into the extraction tools available for drone devices and analysis techniques has been performed to identify best practices for handling drone devices in a forensically sound manner. A new framework to perform a full forensic analysis of small to medium sized commercial drone devices and their controllers has been proposed to give investigators a plan of action to perform forensic analysis on these devices. The proposed framework overcomes some limitations of other drone forensics investigation frameworks presented in the literature.