Abstract:
The phrase ‘seeing is believing’ has been validated to the point where any proposition to the
contrary sounds bizarre. The boom of the digital camera, photography, and social media has
drastically changed how humans live their day-to-day, but this normalisation has been
accompanied by malicious agents finding new ways to forge and tamper with images. Primarily,
the motivation is unfair or unlawful monetary gain.
Disinformation in the photographic media realm is an urgent threat. There are so many image
editing tools available today that it is almost impossible to differentiate between a photo-realistic
and an original image. The tools available for image forensics require a standard framework
against which they can be evaluated. Such a standard framework can aid in evaluating the
suitability of an image forensics tool for use in a criminal investigation, commercial operation, or
for academic research. This research work proposes an evaluation framework for image forensics
tools.
The proposed framework is based on the conformance methodology of testing which employs
test assertions and test cases. It is then tested by evaluating four image forensics tools namely
FotoForensics, Ghiro, Imago Forensics, and Exif Reader.
The framework provides a comparative insight into the tools based on test results. The evaluation
of the image forensics tools revealed that FotoForensics provides a lot of optional features
efficiently in addition to core features. The test results of Ghiro conformed to its usability
features while Imago Forensics and Exif Reader lacked in providing a majority of optional
features. This comparison can provide the information necessary for users to make intelligent
choices about tools and it can help vendors shortlist areas of improvement in their tools.
