BT-DEF: A Secure Digital Evidence Framework Using Blockchain and TP-Merkle Tree

Digital security and forensics (DSF) is very important to identify or restore the truth when cybercrimes (such as document forgery, online bullying, and malicious defamation) occur. Thus, the attestation and audit of evidence data are necessarily required in legal proceedings or business purposes. Attestation and audit have to achieve security, transparency, and scalability. To address these issues, we use blockchain and transaction positioned Merkle tree (TP-Merkle tree) to realize a digital evidence framework (BT-DEF) to deal with the corresponding DSF issues. In addition, based on hashing and compressing techniques, our approach can efficiently process large-scale data to speed up attestation and audit. Finally, our BT-DEF is a scalable, secure and cost-effective method, and can be used for various intended applications.