A Forensic Investigation Framework for Smart Home Environment

Increasingly our home environment is a part of the Internet, in the sense that devices in our homes (e.g. intelligent home assistants, sensors and smart meters) are Internet-interconnected. In other words, smart home environment is, and will be, an important source of evidence in the foreseeable future. There has been relatively few research on the forensic acquisition and analysis of a home automation system. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a forensic investigation framework for the smart home environment and evaluate its utility using three case studies. Our framework can also be used as a quick reference guide for digital forensic investigators working on future home automation systems.