A study on an investigation procedure of digital forensics for VMware Workstation's virtual machine and a method for a corrupted image recovery

Virtualization is a technology that uses a logical environment to overcome physical limitations in hardware. As a part of cost savings and green IT policies, there is a tendency in which recent businesses increase the adoption of such virtualization. In particular, regarding the virtualization in desktop, it is one of the most widely used technology at the present time. Because it is able to efficiently use various types of operating systems in a physical computer. A virtual machine image that is a key component of virtualization is difficult to investigate. because the structure of virtual machine image is different from hard disk image. Therefore, we need researches about appropriate investigation procedure and method based on technical understanding of a virtual machine. In this research, we suggest a procedure of investigation on a virtual machine image and a method for a corrupted image of the VMware Workstation that has the largest number of users.