X-Online: An Online Interface for Digital Decryption Tools

In this paper, we describe X-Online, a Web application designed to interface with a password-recovery and/or decryption tool such as AccessData´s Distributed Network Attack (DNAtrade) tool. X-Online allows for submission of documents in a highly secure and reliable manner for digital forensic processing. The output of the digital forensic tool interfaced with X-Online is displayed back to the user. We anticipate that web service-based applications such as X-Online will be increasingly important as e-forensic tools. In this paper, we give an overview of the need for such systems, describe our system´s design, and discuss the key security and reliability aspects associated with the system. X-Online is based on two different operating system platforms (Linux and Windows), and uses a secure Web server as well as additional authentication protocols for security. File sharing supports interfacing to the widely used DNA Digital Decryption tool, and protecting this service was accordingly a major component of our overall security design. We also discuss the features that we plan to support in the future, and our designs to use it in connection with a broader forensic research initiative