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Drone Forensics

Drone Forensics

Points discussed:

  • What kind of data can be obtained from a drone
  • What kind of crimes can be committed using a drone
  • What is the standard operating procedure on obtaining a drone
  • Where all the data lies
  • What data lies in each location
  • How can you map controller data to that of the drone so that you can identify or prove that a particular person was controlling the drone

Types of drone forensic crimes in India

  • surveillance
  • dropping illegal drugs

Hard to get info on who was controlling the drone from the drones cuz:

  • Self charging
  • configure autonomous flights
  • can be configured to be private

Standard operating procedure for drone :

  1. Turn off the drone
  2. Collect SD card

What will be on the SD card?

  • similar to computer hard disk - similar to PC forensics
  • will contain photos and videos

What will be there in Internal image not there in SD card?

  • Flight data and logs
  • how many satellites it was communicating to
  • GPS
  • Error logs
  • error logs sent to controller
  • Sensor data
  • Activities are recorded using an accelerometer
  • x,y,z data of flight data can give us an idea of the flight

Types of controllers that can be used to control the drone
1.Internal remote controller, eg: DGI

  • If its an internal joystick, no data can be obtained
  • but if paired with mobile, we can get mobile data (Pairing info)

2. Mobile

  • flight logs are stored as .dat format in drone and .txt in mobile
  • if same kind of photos and videos in both mobile , we can correlate somehow
  • Some third-party drones have their own party
  • app data from mobile containing photos and videos
  • app will contain serial number of the drone

3. PCs

  1. Automatated data flight using apps like Mission Planner :
  2. to create an automated file for drone flight mission
  3. out is a .bin file
  4. Drone control using PC

4. VR Goggles

  • Can be used to control the drones and visualise flight data

5. Cloud data

  • If images and videos is configured to be updated in the cloud