BitCurator Visits SAA 2013

Last week, members of the BitCurator team visited New Orleans for the 2013 Society of American Archivists (SAA) Joint Annual Meeting. On Tuesday, August 13, we presented a poster at the 7th Annual SAA Research Forum on how the BitCurator environment can support archivists’ preservation goals in institutions.

In our poster, we described four preservation scenarios during the creation and ingest of a disk image into an archival repository. We then showed how the output generated by BitCurator tools during each scenario can be captured and stored as PREMIS-encoded preservation events.

Event 1: Image Capture
Definition: A forensic disk image is extracted from the original media source and created.
Tool: Guymager
Metadata: Acquisition time; duration of capture; manufacturing device & serial number; user who performed acquisition; cryptographic hash values

Event 2: File System Analysis
Definition: A set of file-objects corresponding to all of the files and directories identified on a disk image is analyzed and reported.
Tool: fiwalk
Metadata: Time of analysis; duration of analysis; user who performed file system analysis; file system partitions; file system volumes

Event 3: Feature Analysis
Definition: Describes forensic analysis of the raw bitstream, producing reports on specific features of interest (such as personally identifying or other sensitive information).
Tool: bulk extractor
Metadata: Time of analysis; execution environment; number of reports produced;

Event 4: Redaction
Definition: Used to overwrite specific patterns within the disk image according to a user-supplied rule-set.
Tool: iRedact.py
Metadata: Time of redaction; environment details; user performing redaction; name of new redacted image