OpenForensics is an open-source OpenCL Digital Forensics analysis and file carving tool. This prototype tool was built in conjunction with PhD research from Dr Ethan Bayne as a platform to demonstrate the performance enhancements possible when employing asynchronous GPU processing and an optimised PFAC algorithm to the problem of string searching within a digital forensics context. Details of the supporting research can be found in the completed thesis by Dr Ethan Bayne. (Bayne, E. (2017). Accelerating digital forensic searching through GPGPU parallel processing techniques. PhD thesis. Abertay University.)

The refined pattern matching technique employed by OpenForensics was also presented at DFRWS EU 2018. The conference proceedings can be found in Digital Investigation. (Bayne, E., Ferguson, R. I., & Sampson, A. T. (2018). OpenForensics: a digital forensics GPU pattern matching approach for the 21st century. Digital Investigation, 24(Suppl.), S29-S37. DOI: 10.1016/j.diin.2018.01.005)

This prototype tool was built using C# and Cudafy.NET (https://cudafy.codeplex.com/). Currently, the file carving provided by this tool is considered basic (carves data between found header and footer). Whilst it is intended to develop more advanced file carving features in time, we would welcome collaborators to help build upon the functionality of the tool.

The latest version of OpenForensics can be found on GitHub: https://www.github.com/ethanbayne/OpenForensics