Creating Realistic Corpora for Forensic and Security Education

We present work on the design, implementation, distribution, and use of realistic forensic datasets to support digital forensics and security education. We describe in particular the “M57-Patents” scenario, a multi-modal corpus consisting of hard drive images, RAM images, network captures, and images from other devices typically found in forensics investigations such as USB drives and cellphones. Corpus creation has been performed as part of a scripted scenario; subsequently it is less “noisy” than real-world data but retains the complexity necessary to support a wide variety of forensic education activities. Realistic forensic corpora allow direct comparison of approaches and tools across classrooms and institutions, reduce the time required to prepare useful educational materials, and eliminate concerns of exposing students to privacy-sensitive or illegal digital materials. The “M57Patents” corpus can be freely redistributed without rights-restricted materials, and is available with disk images packaged in both open (Advanced Forensic Format) and commercial (EnCase) formats.