X-Online: An Online Interface for Digital Decryption Tools

In this paper, we describe X-Online, a Web application designed to interface with a password-recovery and/or decryption tool such as AccessData's Distributed Network Attack (DNA^{TM}) tool. X-Online allows for submission of documents in a highly secure and reliable manner for digital forensic processing. The output of the digital forensic tool interfaced with X-online is displayed back to the user. We anticipate that web service-based applications such as X-Online will be increasingly important as e-Forensic tools. In this paper, we give an overview of the need for such systems, describe our system's design, and discuss the key security and reliability aspects associated with the system. XOnline is based on two different Operating System platforms (Linux and Windows), and uses a secure webserver as well as additional authentication protocols for security. File sharing supports interfacing to the widely used DNA Digital Decryption tool, and protecting this service was accordingly a major component of our overall security design. We also discuss the features that we plan to support in the future, and our designs to use it in connection with a broader forensic research initiative.