Forensic analysis of I2P activities

Abstract

File sharing applications that operate as form of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have been popular amongst users and developers for their heterogeneity and easy deployments features. However, they have been used for illegal activities online. This brings new challenges to forensic investigations in detecting, retrieving and analysing the P2P applications. We investigate the characteristics of I2P network in order to outline the problems and methods in detection of I2P artefacts. Furthermore, we present new methods to detect the presence of I2P using forensically approved tools and reconstruct the history of I2P activity using artefacts left over by I2P router software.