DOD Licenses Data Carver

A digital forensics tool capable of retrieving previously unrecoverable data is now available to license from the United States Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Center (DC3).

DC3’s Advanced Carver was invented by digital forensics expert Dr. Eoghan Casey to salvage corrupted data files from almost any digital device. The tool can be used to recover digital content, including documents, databases, videos, images, and executable files, from devices such as smartphones, laptops, and cameras.

“DC3 Advanced Carver was created to maximize renderable recovered content by salvaging files and fragments that other tools miss; it eliminates false positive results typically produced by other carving tools,” said Casey. 

“The innovative design enables Advanced Carver to recover files faster by leveraging all available resources of a computer.”

Now, after securing a 20-year utility patent for the tool, DC3 are making the Advanced Carver available to state and local governments and private companies for the first time.

Those wishing to secure a license agreement with the Defense Department to use the DC3 Advanced Carver tool should contact TechLink, a national outreach center at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, that acts as the DOD’s national partnership intermediary for technology transfer.

TechLink’s services are provided at no cost, meaning neither private companies nor DOD researchers pay for this intermediary service.

TechLink’s Troy Carter said that the Advanced Carver had already proven to be a “unique and reliable” tool in digital forensic examinations. 

An unidentified digital forensic examiner who used the tool to extract from a digital video recorder a video that had a proprietary wrapper said: “A special software player was required to view the date/timestamps of the video. Examiners were only able to identify 10 videos for the relevant time frame utilizing existing tools. 

“Utilizing Advanced Carver and collaborating with a developer subject matter expert on how date/time stamps were stored in video files; 1,874 video clips of the relevant time frame were recovered.”

Another examiner who used the tool said: “In a case with a single cellphone as evidence, an examiner ran a UFED Physical Analyzer on its most thorough setting and recovered a total of 103,160 pictures. Advanced Carver was able to recover 270,228 photographs.”