Utilizing IPFS and Private Blockchain to Secure Forensic Information

Abstract

Forensic Science includes scientific methods to find out the actual cause of a crime and to bring justice to the victims. Forensic reports incorporate information regarding different crimes. These details are considered as extremely valuable and confidential as it helps the law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to ensure punishment to the blameworthy persons. These reports require security only to restrict access to the authorized persons. Blockchain stores every transaction occurring in the system and these transactions cannot be removed or modified because of their immutability. In this work, Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS) and Hyperledger based private blockchain are assembled to implement a secure forensic information storing system. Our system enables the tracing of any illegitimate en-trance or data tempering by the intruders. Our proposed hybrid approach surpasses the classical public blockchain systems i.e. Bitcoin and Ethereum in terms of transaction processing time achieving an average of 11.99 seconds per transaction. This system also facilitates the storing of heavyweight features which is not possible inside the existing blockchain frameworks.