Digital Forensic Traces for Amazon Alexa Echo System

Abstract

The Amazon Echo device is a smart speaker produced by Amazon. It allows the user to interact with and control their intelligent home purely by using voice commands through Alexa, a voice-command system that works as an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA). Such devices have recently become more popular. Accordingly, such a device might increasingly be found at the site of a crime. Furthermore, this device stores a vast amount of a user’s sensitive data, both locally and on the cloud. This means that such a device contains valuable digital information that could serve as evidence and artifacts for criminal investigators. This study aims to illustrate and indicate how traces of evidence from Amazon Alexa Echo systems can aid in forensic investigations, as well as develop an add-on module for the Autopsy forensic tool to analyse such data.