Blockchain-Enabled Digital Forensics for the IoT: Challenges, Features, and Current Frameworks

With the number of the IoT devices to be increased constantly, cyber-attacks are increased as well, making the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem susceptible to illegal and criminal activities. The fight and the investigation of cyber-crime are currently compelling topics of research against severe attacks. With billions of devices being used nowadays, the IoT ecosystem produces a variety of evidences and a vast amount of IoT data that arise various challenges for the investigation of the cyber-crime. Albeit, the area of IoT forensics is new for research, various IoT forensic frameworks have been introduced that investigate cyber-attacks. However, the most recent and promising approaches rely on the blockchain technology, which seems to provide several beneficial features. Therefore, this paper provides an inclusive of the IoT issues and challenges within an IoT ecosystem from a forensic point of view. It also presents the beneficial features of applying the blockchain technology to digital forensics and surveys the most recently developed blockchain solutions for IoT forensic frameworks.