Forensic Tools for IoT Device Investigations in regards to Human Trafficking

As the Internet of Things (IoT) environment rapidly grows, so do the distribution and utilisation of IoT devices as well as Cyber-Enabled and Dependent Crime activities. Investigators face challenges in regards to available tools which are able to efficiently access and analyse the content of IoT devices. Due to the fast development of technology these tools are limited especially in terms of operating systems (OS) compatibility and cross-border investigations.In this paper, we review a variety of most popular used digital forensic tools, specifically in terms of their limitations in investigating IoT devices. As an alternative we introduce a new tool, the Hybrid Forensic IoT Server (HFIoTS), to improve IoT Forensics efficiently and we prove that it is adequate to investigate a variety of cases such as human trafficking. HFIoTS is aimed towards a dynamic and complex environment, such as the IoT, to minimise the current investigative challenges of its forensics. To elaborate on the importance of improving the investigation of the IoT forensically, we establish the context of IoT forensics investigations and its current challenges as well as the most popular tools. Furthermore, we demonstrate our HFIoTS model framework as well as its interface for investigation purposes. Additionally, we present HFIoTS within a hypothetical case study of human trafficking to demonstrate its efficiency and necessity within the IoT forensic environment and discuss its benefits in comparison to the reviewed forensic tools overall.