Chain of Custody | Digital Forensics

The documented sequence of possession, transfer and handling actions applied to digital evidence from acquisition through analysis and presentation.

Chain of custody documents how digital evidence is possessed, transferred and handled throughout its lifecycle; it is broader than a file hash.

Technical Record

Acquisition, transfer, copying, analysis and archival steps should remain traceable through time, responsible person/role, method/tool and integrity verification.

A cryptographic hash helps detect bit-level change, but it does not answer who accessed the evidence or which copy was used for a particular analysis.

Reproducible Analysis

For forensic software, chain of custody and reproducibility reinforce each other. Retaining the input hash, software version, parameters and output relationship makes later reconstruction of the analysis easier.

Boundary

Matching hashes do not by themselves establish chain of custody. Physical/logical access, authorization, transfer and handling history require procedural records.