Workshop Description:
Digital forensics is a rapidly evolving field primarily focused on the extraction, preservation and analysis of digital evidence obtained from electronic devices in a manner suitable for the presentation of that evidence in a court of law, or its use in other legal proceedings or formal investigation. Research into new methodologies tools and techniques within this domain is necessitated by an ever-increasing dependency on tightly interconnected, complex and pervasive computer systems and networks. The ubiquitous nature of digital devices in modern life presents many avenues for the potential misuse of these devices in crimes that directly involve, or are facilitated by, these technologies. The aim of digital forensics is to produce outputs that can aid in the reconstruction of a sequence of events under investigation, including any events that have occurred within or involving the digital device being examined and entities that have interacted with that device. Due care has to be taken in the identification, collection, archiving, maintenance, handling and analysis of digital evidence in order to prevent damage to data integrity. Such issues combined with the constant evolution of technology provide a large scope of digital forensic research.

WSDF aims to bring together experts from academia, industry, government and law enforcement who are interested in advancing the state of the art in digital forensics by exchanging their knowledge, results, ideas, challenges, best practices and experiences. The aim of the workshop is to provide a relaxed atmosphere that promotes discussion and free exchange of ideas while providing a sound academic backing. Its focus is not only restricted to technical digital forensics but WSDF also welcomes investigative related topics in policing, criminology, law and behavioural sciences.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Digital Evidence Extraction and Analysis
Network Forensics
Anti-Forensics Techniques
Memory Forensics
Digital Forensics of immersive technologies (AR/MR/VR/XR)
Cyber Terrorism and Warfare
Log Analysis and Malware Analysis
Incident Response and Management
Best Practices and Case Studies
AI to enhance investigation capabilities (e.g., Natural Language Generation (NLG), Large Language Models (LLMs))
AI applications/benefits for policing
Digital Forensics of AI-based systems
Quality assurance in investigations
Certification of Digital Forensics labs Novel Data Recovery and Analysis Techniques
Cyber Criminal Profiling
Big Data in Digital Forensics
Digital Forensics datasets
Digital Forensics education
Cloud Forensics
Mobile & Drone Forensics
Emerging challenges in Digital Forensics
eDiscovery
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
Cybercrime investigations
AI-generated synthetic evidence (trends, use, impact)
Evidence gathering in adversarial attacks
AI-generated child abuse material
Investigations involving Deepfakes
Legal and court challenges of Deepfakes
Pattern-of-life Analysis in the era of AI

Workshop Chairs

▪ Virginia N. L. Franqueira
University of Kent, UK

▪ Andrew Marrington
Zayed University, UAE

▪ Richard Overill
King’s College London, UK

▪ Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo
University of Texas at San Antonio, US

Submission Guidelines
The submission guidelines can be found at https://www.ares-conference.eu/conference/submission/ (6-8 pages, a maximum of 10 pages is tolerated). Double blind review: All papers submitted to EasyChair should be anonymized (no names or affiliations of authors should be visible in the paper) with no obvious self-references. Submission of a paper implies that should the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors will register and present the paper in the workshop. Proceedings will be published by ACM.