Cloud computing presents both challenges and opportunities for digital forensics, the field dedicated to collecting, preserving, and analyzing digital evidence from diverse sources like computers, mobile devices, and networks. This forensic discipline serves various purposes, including criminal investigations, dispute resolution, and compliance verification. A primary challenge in cloud forensics is gaining access to and obtaining evidence stored or processed on remote servers controlled by third-party providers, often subject to legal, technical, or ethical constraints that can restrict its accessibility and admissibility.
A new tool that aims to help investigators analyze cloud-based evidence is CloudXaminer, which was released by CyberEvidence. CloudXaminer is a cloud-native tool that can be used to collect, preserve, and analyze data from a variety of cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
CloudXaminer operates in three distinct phases. First, it establishes connections with cloud accounts and services using API keys or credentials, gathering a wide range of data types that encompass metadata, logs, files, and snapshots. Next, CloudXaminer ensures the secure and tamper-proof preservation of this collected data through encryption and hashing techniques, while also creating forensic images or copies adhering to standard formats like E01 or AFF4. Lastly, the preserved data undergoes thorough analysis employing diverse methods such as keyword searches, timeline analysis, anomaly detection, and even machine learning. In addition to this, CloudXaminer has the capability to generate comprehensive reports and engaging visualizations using charts, graphs, or maps, providing valuable insights from the analyzed data.
CloudXaminer offers several advantages for analyzing cloud-based evidence. It boasts compatibility with multiple cloud providers and the ability to integrate with other forensic tools like Autopsy, X-Ways, or Cellebrite. Additionally, CloudXaminer excels at scalability, efficiently handling large datasets and adapting to varying investigation demands. Moreover, its accessibility through web browsers and mobile apps facilitates usage from any location, fostering collaboration and communication among investigators and stakeholders through features such as sharing and commenting.
CloudXaminer is a new tool that helps investigators analyze cloud-based evidence in the digital world. It is essential that human oversight and governance remain a part of CloudXaminer, as it becomes more prevalent and complex in its analysis of cloud-based evidence.
