Digital Forensic Investigation of a Damaged Drone: A Case Study

The security personals are facing serious challenges in handling rouge drones. There have been many reported incidents wherein drones were used for illegal activities like arms, ammunition and contraband smuggling. The rouge drones, if sighted, are engaged and made to land forcefully or shot down by the security personals; however in this process, the drone incurs partial or complete damage. The damaged drones have limited forensic value; however, the partially damaged drones, if investigated properly, can yield many useful digital artefacts and reveal information about the drone’s capabilities and its mission. This paper presents a case study and proposes a methodology for damaged drone digital forensics.