From biometric to forensic hashing: Challenges in digital crime scene trace analysis

The known BioHash concept introduced e.g. for handwriting biometrics offers possibility of template protection or to derive individual keys (e.g. crypto keys for further protection). In our paper we introduce two forensic use cases: (A) the forensic investigation of a BioHash found during digital forensics and (B) the application of the BioHash to latent crime scene traces in digitized forensics. Firstly, we elaborate the design of the BioHash in the known two operation modes with their essential parameter settings. Secondly we analyze, which forensic information can be derived and interpreted from publicly available data by introducing four investigation purposes. Further, we show that the BioHash can be used for a privacy-preserving search or to enhance reproducibility of varying features in crime scene forensics.