A Common Architecture-based Smart Home Hardware Forensics for Scalable Investigations

Abstract The smart home platform communicates with internet of things(IoT) devices, smartphones, and cloud servers to provide convenient services, storing user information and device operation and user behavior-related data. This data is crucial for criminal investigations, highlighting the importance of smart home forensics. Currently, advanced software and hardware technologies continue to be developed in the smart home market, and based on this, companies are releasing new services and devices. Therefore, scalable platform-oriented forensic research is needed for efficient digital investigation. This study identifies the components and structures of smart homes to derive a common architecture representing various environments. It proposes a three-stage smart home forensics framework: analyzing application functions to infer data, extracting and analyzing data from devices, and identifying data useful for criminal investigations. Its applicability is demonstrated with Samsung SmartThings and Xiaomi Mi Home platform testbeds.