Write Blocker – SOUA (Hardware and Software Write Blocker)

Abstract

Collection and storage of data is day by day becoming a norm. According to a Forbes article "From 2010 to 2020, the amount of data created, captured, copied, and consumed in the world increased from 1.2 trillion gigabytes to 59 trillion gigabytes, an almost 5,000% growth". Majority of today’s organizations routinely make data-driven business decisions. So, data integrity is just as important as the data itself, as changing just one bit among perhaps gigabits of data, will irrevocably alter that data and cast doubt on any prediction or decision made using it. Therefore, in this thesis we present our solution for this problem which can easily be used by general users and sensitive organizations (strategic, banks, audit firms, law enforcement, armed forces and many others) to overcome the above stated integrity problem, that is the Write Blocker. There are many Software and Hardware based write blockers available in the market, but are expensive. We, therefore intent to design proprietary software write blocker and hardware write blocker (prototype) to introduce forensic market space in the Pakistan. Our proposed Write Blocker (SOUA) will allow read only access to a storage device for procuring image of the digital evidence while preserving the integrity of the digital device.