engleski

UAV Forensics: DJI Mavic Air Noninvasive Data Extraction and Analysis

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems are a rapidly evolving and emerging technology with their widespread usage. This rapid growth of usage of UAVs has also augmented associated security issues and criminal activities. UAVs are rich sources of digital evidence and there is a growing need for acquisition and analysis of their stored and transferred data, including all the elements which form unmanned aerial system (UAS). This research paper presents a forensic investigation on an UAV, specifically the DJI Mavic Air, and associated smartphone app DJI GO 4 installed on Android device used as a part of the ground control station (GCS). Forensic analysis of flight logs, media files, and other important files of UAV and controlling application for identifying digital artifacts was done by a commercial forensic tool that does not require invasive or destructive methods for data acquisition. Through a five-step investigation methodology, it was found that the internal and external storage of DJI Mavic Air and associated Android device with installed DJI GO 4 application contain a significant and valuable amount of forensic data. Moreover, those data were classified into segments and provided details of some of the possible evidence in digital investigation.

Digital forensics, Drone forensics, UAV, UAS, DJI Mavic Air

Part of the EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing book series (EAISICC)