Digital Evidence Challenges in the Internet of Things

The implementation of the Internet of Things will result in the connection of tens of billions of wireless devices to the Internet. These devices will form an intelligent substrate pervading all aspects of life. From intelligent home control to advanced city management systems, devices will sense their environment as well as interconnect and communicate with each other to form intelligent smart spaces. Individually and collectively, these devices produce and consume large amounts of personally sensitive data. This new environment provides a rich set of data sources; when used in conjunction with one another, they can greatly inform a historical situation that may have occurred with little or no reliable human witness evidence. However, this deeply pervasive environment will provide challenges to the various agencies that will need to interact with this new technology. This paper establishes the fundamental overarching challenges the IoT poses to digital forensics, and identifies the key areas that solutions should target.