Abstract
In digital forensics, proper evidence management is crucial for police
investigations due to its volatility and improper handling technique.
However, to present and utilize the captured digital forensic images,
which are typically concrete and admissible in court and a trial, is
very challenging. In addition, centralized evidence-gathering,
classification, and archiving techniques diminish the credibility of
digital evidence. To address these issues, this work proposed a
blockchain-based classified digital forensic sensitive image management
framework. The framework includes a rapidly expanding polygon chain,
Interplanetary File System (IPFS), and a deep learning model that
performs with more than 98% accuracy. This framework preserves
sensitive forensic images in the fully decentralized blockchain. Our
system uses metamask wallet-based authentication to guard against
unauthorized users. We use IPFS to produce the image hash to encrypt and
save the forensic image in the blockchain. A voting method based on
smart contracts is suggested for accessing the preserved image. We
implemented the framework, which offers promising performances in
response time, evidence insertion time, evidence access time,
communication overhead, and effective forensic image categorization.