A Study on the Admissibility of the Virtual Machine Image File as a Digital Evidence in Server Virtualization Environment

As many companies are considering to use server virtualization technology to reduce cost, the crime rates in virtual server environment are expected to be increasing rapidly. The server virtualization solution has a basic function to produce virtual machine images without using any other disk imaging tools, so that investigating virtual servers are more efficient because the investigator only has to collect the virtual machine image and submit it to the court. However, the virtual machine image has no admissibility to be the legal evidence because of security, authenticity, procedural problems in collecting virtual machine images on virtual servers. In this research, we are going to provide requirements to satisfy security, authenticity and chain of custody conditions for the admissibility of the virtual machine image in server virtualization environment. Additionally, we suggest definite roles and driving plans for related organizations to produce virtual machine image as a admissible evidence.