A systematic evaluation of disk imaging in EnCase® 6.8 and LinEn 6.1

Tools for disk imaging (or more generally speaking, digital acquisition) are a foundation for forensic examination of digital evidence. Therefore it is crucial that such tools work as expected. The only way to determine whether this is the case or not is through systematic testing of each tool. In this paper we present such an evaluation of the disk imaging functions of EnCase 6.8^(R) and LinEn 6.1, conducted on behalf of the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science. Although both tools performed as expected under most circumstances, we identified cases where flaws that can lead to inaccurate and incomplete acquisition results in LinEn 6.1 were exposed. We have also identified limitations in the tool that were not evident from its documentation. In addition summarizing the test results, we present our testing methodology, which has novel elements that we think can benefit other evaluation projects.