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A digital forensic model for providing better data provenance in the cloud

The cloud has made digital forensic investigations exceedingly difficult due to the fact that data may be spread over an ever-changing set of hosts and data centres. The normal search and seizure approach that digital forensic investigators tend to follow does not scale well in the cloud because it is difficult to identify the physical devices that data resides on. In addition, the location of these devices is often unknown or unreachable. A solution to identifying the physical device can be found in data provenance. Similar to the tags included in an email header, indicating where the email originated, a tag added to data, as it is passed on by nodes in the cloud, identifies where the data came from. If such a trace can be provided for data in the cloud it may ease the investigating process by indicating where the data can be found. In this research the authors propose a model that aims to identify the physical location of data, both where it originated and where it has been as it passes through the cloud. This is done through the use of data provenance. The data provenance records will provide digital investigators with a clear record of where the data has been and where it can be found in the cloud.