A Review Study on Anti-Forensic Techniques and Their Detection in Digital Forensics

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_20How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Anti-Forensics; Digital Forensics; Cybercrimes; Evading techniques

Abstract

Digital forensic methodologies and tools have become a crucial part for investigation of cybercrimes. Digital forensics experts usually follow a common workflow and use known methodologies and tools while investigating a case. Attackers and cybercriminals are aware of which methodologies are used in an investigation and how digital forensic tools work, as a consequence, they started to find and implement a new methodology which is called Anti-Forensics where attackers try to tamper the digital forensic investigation process by manipulating evidence to hide or conceal their tracks of malicious activities. They make it difficult or almost impossible for investigators to uncover the digital evidence which aim to mislead the investigation process. Therefore, implementing effective countermeasures is essential to identify the anti-forensics tools or techniques and stop these attackers. This review study focuses on comprehensive analysis of commonly used anti forensic tools and techniques and their detection and countermeasures used in digital forensic investigations. This paper classifies various anti-forensic methods into evidence hiding, evidence destruction, evidence manipulation furthermore it examines different detection methods including timeline reconstruction, file system analysis and machine learning based techniques. By reviewing recent research articles and works, this study highlights the efficiency and limitations of present detection mechanisms this paper also highlights challenges faced by investigators such as encryption, handling volatile data and dependency on tools.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Chinthakindhi Bhanu Prakash
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/05
TI  - A Review Study on Anti-Forensic Techniques and Their Detection in Digital Forensics
BT  - Proceedings of the First International Conference on Advances in Forensics and Cyber Technologies (ICFACT 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 195
EP  - 208
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_20
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_20
ID  - Prakash2026
ER  -