This is an unedited manuscript accepted for publication and provided as an Article in Press for early access at the author’s request. The article will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and galley proof review before final publication. Please be aware that errors may be identified during production that could affect the content. All legal disclaimers of the journal apply.
Majji Kavya,
Manas Kumar Yogi,
- Student, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Pragati Engineering College, Andhra Pradesh, India
- Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Pragati Engineering College, Andhra Pradesh, India
Abstract
The integrity of the chain of custody is key to the admissibility of digital evidence in court, as any alteration that goes unnoticed can lead to doubts about an exhibit. Traditional methods of record keeping, that depend heavily on the human touch and procedural order, are becoming overstretched by the volume and speed of the digital evidence in today’s world. A hierarchical hashing system that was proposed by Ralph Merkle, the Merkle tree is a cryptographic method for “condensing” a large set of evidence into one verifiable root hash, which allows investigators to detect if any of the underlying data items have been tampered with without having to re-examine each one. This review summarizes the current knowledge and trends in how Merkle trees have been applied to the problem of digital forensic chain-of-custody management, including the cryptographic foundations of Merkle trees, verification methods like Merkle proofs, representative implementation models such as elastic container models, blockchain-based implementation of a digital forensic chain-of-custody, adaptive authentication trees for streaming data, and multi-copy verification schemes for evidence on clouds. These frameworks are then compared and the results of the analysis are placed in the context of the forensic and cryptographic literature and examined in detail for their impact in an operational forensic environment, such as whether they can be integrated with existing procedures and how they affect the reliability of evidence. Common problems and limitations are identified, such as vulnerability to collision and pre-image attacks, computational burden on devices with limited resources, a lack of uniformity across jurisdictions in the formats used, and the integration of cryptographic verification into existing forensics tools. Research directions that are emerging are described, such as post-quantum hash construction, anomaly detection of provenance logs using machine learning, and cross-framework interoperability standards. Overall, the review findings indicate that the Merkle tree verification has the potential to be a scalable and robust solution for complementing existing chain-of-custody protocols in a cryptographically secure manner, when implemented effectively with the right standardization and considerations for resources.
Keywords: Digital Evidence; Chain of Custody; Merkle Trees; Data Integrity Verification; Blockchain; Cryptographic Hashing
References
- Merkle RC. A digital signature based on a conventional encryption function. InConference on the theory and application of cryptographic techniques 1987 Aug 16 (pp. 369-378). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
- Mercan S, Cebe M, Tekiner E, Akkaya K, Chang M, Uluagac S. A cost-efficient iot forensics framework with blockchain. In2020 IEEE international conference on blockchain and cryptocurrency (ICBC) 2020 May 2 (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
- Du W, Jia J, Mangal M, Murugesan M. Uncheatable grid computing. In24th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 2004. Proceedings. 2004 Mar 26 (pp. 4-11). IEEE.
- Han J, Han ML, Lee S, Park J. Eco-bag: An elastic container based on merkle tree as a universal digital evidence bag. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation. 2024 Jun 1;49:301725.
- Miao Y, Huang Q, Xiao M, Susilo W. Blockchain assisted multi-copy provable data possession with faults localization in multi-cloud storage. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. 2022 Oct 4;17:3663-76.
- Dave J, Dutta A, Faruki P, Laxmi V, Gaur MS. Secure proof of ownership using merkle tree for deduplicated storage. Automatic Control and Computer Sciences. 2020 Jul;54(4):358-70.
- Sun Y, Liu Q, Chen X, Du X. An adaptive authenticated data structure with privacy-preserving for big data stream in cloud. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. 2020 Apr 13;15:3295-310.
- Lee D, Park N. Blockchain based privacy preserving multimedia intelligent video surveillance using secure Merkle tree. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 2021 Nov;80(26):34517-34.
- He K, Shi J, Huang C, Hu X. Blockchain based data integrity verification for cloud storage with T-merkle tree. InInternational Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing 2020 Sep 29 (pp. 65-80). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
- Gallo P, Pongnumkul S, Nguyen UQ. BlockSee: Blockchain for IoT video surveillance in smart cities. In2018 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2018 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC/I&CPS Europe) 2018 Jun 12 (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
- Kerr M, Han F, van Schyndel R. A blockchain implementation for the cataloguing of cctv video evidence. In2018 15th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance (AVSS) 2018 Nov 27 (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
- Jeong Y, Hwang D, Kim KH. Blockchain-based management of video surveillance systems. In2019 International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN) 2019 Jan 9 (pp. 465-468). IEEE.
Journal Of Network security
| Volume | 14 | |
| 02 | ||
| Received | 08/03/2026 | |
| Accepted | 24/07/2026 | |
| Published | 03/08/2026 | |
| Publication Time | 148 Days |