The forensic authentication examination of the formation time of digital photos is a significant technical challenge in the field of forensic science and plays an important role on court litigation and judicial forensics. The authentication of a digital photo’s formation time involves professionally judging the actual taken time of the photo. However, the timerelated data contained in digital photos depends on the system time information of the shooting device, which can be easily manually altered. This fact fundamentally complicates the forensic authentication examination of the formation time of digital photos by affecting the authenticity of the data source. This paper investigates the formation time identification issues for photos taken by mainstream smartphones by using the key technologies from the fields of mobile digital data forensics and image authenticity verification. The characteristics of smartphone camera applications and the photographic traits of images produced by smartphones are comprehensively studied. The context image information, image file properties, and metadata from smartphones are used for study. We aim to scientifically and effectively authenticate the formation time of photos from mainstream smartphones, providing critical technical support and guidance for forensic science.
Images formed by WeChat are widely used as a type of evidence in courts. The research on their image characteristics is of great significance to forensic science application. In this paper, we study the characteristics of the WeChat formed images and videos. Their file attributes, metadata, and digital data change features are systematically studied under the different operating system environments, different program versions, different formation methods, different transmission methods, etc. The forensic examination on the WeChat formed images is further discussed, involving image formation time identification, image source identification, image authenticity identification, and so on. Our results show that the images and videos formed by the WeChat program have their own unique image characteristics, which can be effectively applied for forensic examination of the WeChat formed images.
KEYWORDS: Video, Cameras, Inspection, Forensic science, Video surveillance, Video compression, Data storage, Analytical research, Video coding, Nomenclature
With the rise of network cameras, the authenticity of video data they capture has become a common challenge in forensic science and expertise. There are many camera manufacturers and brands available, and videos from different sources have their distinct properties. To evaluate these videos needs further exploration of the key traits. This paper collected eight commonly used network cameras on the market. It studied and analyzed the features of network camera video data from four parts, i.e., storage media traits, video properties, metadata features, and image details. This research builds effective authenticity-proof techniques for webcam recordings by extracting and evaluating their internal features. The results provide core technical guidance and key supporting data for authenticating webcam videos within the domain of forensic science.
KEYWORDS: Operating systems, Information operations, Cell phones, Nomenclature, Analytical research, Data modeling, Digital forensics, Forensic science, Systems modeling, Statistical analysis
In the modern digital society, mobile phone screenshots are essential for documenting data, proving events, and providing legal evidence. However, modern digital technologies have made taking screenshots easy. Significant differences exist between screenshots and traditional mobile photography images in the formation way, leading to immature industry research in screenshot source tracing, by complicating the authenticity proof. The study aims to explore critical methods and techniques in the source tracing and authentication of mobile phone screenshots. The paper involves collecting screenshot images produced by 50 common mobile phone models available in the market and analyzing their metadata. This research employs a multifaceted analysis of screenshots, using metadata, image characteristics, file naming patterns, and unique markers to trace their origins to specific mobile and working versions. Based on this, the paper further discusses the main challenges faced in mobile screenshot source tracing and authentication. Results show that, despite challenges, integrating digital forensics and multidimensional feature detection enables reliable tracing and authentication of mobile screenshots. The research provides essential technical support and data backing for the authenticity proof of images in forensic science or legal examination and the source tracing of mobile.
KEYWORDS: Forensic science, Scanners, Image processing, Digital forensics, Standards development, Printing, Information technology, Focus stacking software, Data conversion, Operating systems
With the rapid development and widespread popularization of information technology, Portable Document Format (PDF) documents have gradually become a type of digital files that are easily accessible and closely related to the public. In digital forensics, digital files in the form of PDF documents are often encountered, and their authenticity needs to be determined. Therefore, the research on its key forensic techniques has important theoretical research significance and practical application value. However, through searching the literature, we can find that there is still a lack of systematic research on forensic authentication of PDF documents. Based on the above situation, this paper first studies the file structure and digital composition of PDF documents; The digital data characteristics and the contents for examination of PDF files produced by the mainstream scenarios are studied, including PDF generated by scanners, converting directly from images, and transforming from DOCX documents, etc. Finally, a case study is carried out to explain the key technologies and examination contents for authenticity examinations of PDF documents in detail. Our study will provide theoretical basis and practical guidance for forensic investigations of authenticity examinations of PDF documents.
This paper proposes a study on whether the speaker’s body size (height, weight) and oral cavity (lip protrusion LP, lip opening LO, front cavity FC) characteristics can be predicted based on the acoustic features of speech. Firstly, Pearson’s correlation analysis was first conducted to examine the relationships between acoustic features and body size and oral cavity characteristics. Further, the effects of acoustic features in predicting body size and oral cavity characteristics were examined using random forest and decision tree models. The results showed that fundamental frequency statistics (i.e., mean, max, min) exhibited significant negative correlations with height, weight, and FC. Besides, good accuracies of classification in height, LP range, LO range, and FC range could be achieved based on the acoustic features. The findings in the current paper imply that acoustic features could be the potential features for identification of the speaker’s body size and oral cavity characteristics. This paper will not only contribute to the research and practices in forensic speaker profiling and but also provides foundations for the technology of automatic speaker recognition.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.