Distributed Ledger Technology to Support Digital Evidence Integrity Verification Processes

This paper examines the way in which blockchain technology can be used to improve the integrity of the chain of evidence in digital forensics. A particular scalable method of verifying point-in-time existence of a piece of digital evidence, using the OpenTimestamps (OTS) service, is described, and tests are carried out to independently validate the claims made by the service. The results demonstrate that the OTS service is highly reliable, but not suitable for time-sensitive digital timestamping.