Evaluating A Selection of Tools for Extraction of Forensic Data: Disk ...

software, also known as closed-source software, includes Microsoft® Office, Adobe®
Photoshop, AccessData FTK® and Guidance software Encase®. Digital forensics
software is available in both Open source and Proprietary software. Currently, there is
a gap in the digital forensic industry. There is no program or project that focuses on
testing the OSS to determine whether they function as supposed. Testing Open source
disk imaging tools is what this dissertation will pursue.
There are many arguments and misconceptions of both OSS and proprietary
software regarding the reliability. Source code made available to public can attract
attackers to search and exploit vulnerabilities to achieve their goals (Boulanger, 2005).
According to the OSS development process, source code publicly available can be
evaluated by other developers. If problems or vulnerabilities of the software are
identified, other developers would report them and the software programmers will
analyse the problems and provide solutions to these problems. Collaboration of
different efforts from large number of developers will make software much more
reliable and secure than Proprietary software. Waring & Maddocks (2005) stated that
this can also be enhanced with the availability of the source code to other
programmers who can identify problems and propose solutions. Also, there five
present research cases of UK public sectors adopted OSS and this indicate that
reliability is a benefit to their organisations (Waring & Maddocks, 2005). Furthermore,
OSS considers peer review procedure to have a central role in their development
process. The peer review procedure also complies with the Daubert guidelines factor 2
as the evidence has subjected to peer reviewed and publication. Some people argue
that peer review process of OSS is not effective as it is claimed to be. Viega (2000)
raised an argument that source code open to the public does not automatically
guarantee the code will be reviewed and analysed by competent developers. For
example, a bug in Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) UNIX caused a simultaneous
file access conflict issue, that existed in the system for over 25 years (Perrin, 2008).
On the other hand, Payne (2002) suggested that the argument must always be
taken with “a grain of salt” because a system such as Sun Microsystems Solaris is
considered as reliable while operating as a closed source. Evidence can be found that
closed source Proprietary software has less security vulnerabilities than OSS if we take
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