Carving Thumbnail/s and Embedded JPEG Files Using Image Pattern Matching

Images (typically JPEG) are used as evidence against cyber perpetrators. Typically the file is carved using standard patterns. Many concentrate on carving JPEG files and overlook the important of thumbnail in assisting forensic investigation. However, a new unique pattern is used to detect thumbnail/s and embedded JPEG file. This paper is to introduce a tool call PattrecCarv to recognize thumbnail/s or embedded JPEG files using unique hex patterns (UHP). A tool called PattrecCarv is developed to automatically carve thumbnail/s and embedded JPEG files using DFRWS 2006 and DFRWS 2007 datasets. The tool successfully recovers 11.5% more thumbnails and embedded JPEG files than PredClus.