Taxonomy of Data Fragment Classification Techniques

Several fields of digital forensics (i.e. file carving, memory forensics, network forensics) require the reliable data type classification of digital fragments. Up to now, a multitude of research papers proposing new classification approaches have been published. Within this paper we comprehensively review existing classification approaches and classify them into categories. For each category, approaches are grouped based on shared commonalities. The major contribution of this paper is a novel taxonomy of existing data fragment classification approaches. We highlight progress made by previous work facilitating the identification of future research directions. Furthermore, the taxonomy can provide the foundation for future knowledge-based classification approaches.