Open Access

ARTICLE

Windows 10's Browser Forensic Analysis for Tracing P2P Networks’ Anonymous Attacks

Saima Kauser¹, Tauqeer Safdar Malik^1,*, Mohd Hilmi Hasan², Emelia Akashah P. Akhir², Syed Muhammad Husnain Kazmi³

1 Air University, Department of Computer Science, Multan, 60000, Pakistan
2 Centre for Research in Data Science, Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Perak, 32610, Malaysia
3 IAR Systems, Märsta, Stockholm, Station Gatan 23, 19542, Sweden

* Corresponding Author: Tauqeer Safdar Malik. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Machine Learning Empowered Secure Computing for Intelligent Systems)

Computers, Materials & Continua 2022, 72(1), 1251-1273. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2022.022475

Received 09 August 2021; Accepted 29 September 2021; Issue published 24 February 2022

Abstract

A web browser is the most basic tool for accessing the internet from any of the machines/equipment. Recently, data breaches have been reported frequently from users who are concerned about their personal information, as well as threats from criminal actors. Giving loss of data and information to an innocent user comes under the jurisdiction of cyber-attack. These kinds of cyber-attacks are far more dangerous when it comes to the many types of devices employed in an internet of things (IoT) environment. Continuous surveillance of IoT devices and forensic tools are required to overcome the issues pertaining to secure data and assets. Peer to peer (P2P) applications have been utilized for criminal operations on the web. Therefore, it is a challenge for a forensic investigator to perform forensic analysis of the evolving hardware and software platforms for IoT. For identity concealment and privacy protection, the Onion Router (Tor) and Chrome with the Invisible Internet Project (I2P) as the foundation browser are often used. Confirmation is required to determine whether Tor is truly anonymous and private as they claim. Some people, on the other hand, utilize the Tor browser for evil reasons. Tools and techniques are available for the collection of artifacts, identifying problem areas, further processing and analysis of data on the computer and IoT. Present research tried to explore a few tools for the tracing of I2P activities over computer on windows 10 that reflects IoT devices. According to the results of this research, it leaves an excessive amount of important digital evidence on the operating system that can be exploited to attack the information of users. This research is based on windows operating system and does not support other operating systems.

---

Keywords

---