Overview#
The first moment evidence enters a digital system is also the moment its chain of custody begins. A forensic examiner imaging a seized laptop, a field officer submitting photographs from a scene, or a prosecutor uploading a set of disclosed documents: each of these is the origin point of a record that may eventually be scrutinised in court. If the ingestion process loses metadata, fails to verify file integrity, or admits files without formally initialising the custody record, those gaps are very difficult to close later.
The Evidence Upload Management module treats ingestion as a security and forensic boundary, not merely a file transfer. Every file passing through it is validated against its format specification, checked for malware, hashed for cryptographic integrity, and catalogued with automatically extracted metadata before being admitted to the evidence store. The chain of custody record opens at that moment, timestamped and signed, covering every subsequent action the file experiences. Forty-plus file formats are supported natively, and large forensic images arrive reliably through chunked transfer handling.
Key Features#
- Support for 40+ file formats with automatic format detection and compliance validation at the point of submission
- Multi-source upload channels accepting evidence from field devices, forensic workstations, cloud extractions, and external agency transfers
- Cryptographic integrity verification: SHA-256 hash computed at ingestion and locked into the chain of custody record before the file reaches storage
- Automated metadata extraction from file headers, EXIF data, document properties, and embedded attributes, eliminating manual cataloguing for most common formats
- Large file support with chunked upload handling for forensic disk images and multimedia files that would otherwise timeout
- Chain of custody initialisation triggered automatically at the moment of ingestion, with no manual step required to open the custody record
- Virus and malware scanning during ingestion, with quarantine routing for any file that fails a security check
- Batch upload capability for large collections with per-item status tracking and error reporting
- Upload progress tracking with detailed error messages and automatic retry support for interrupted transfers
Use Cases#
- Ingesting evidence from multiple sources with automatic format validation, integrity verification, and metadata extraction in a single end-to-end workflow
- Uploading large forensic images and multimedia files with chunked transfer handling and integrity verification
- Batch-uploading the contents of seized devices with automatic cataloguing and chain of custody initialisation per item
- Ensuring every piece of evidence that enters the platform immediately has a formally opened custody record, with no gap between ingestion and documentation
Integration#
The Evidence Upload Management module connects with evidence storage, chain of custody, malware scanning, and metadata extraction services.
Open Standards#
- SHA-256 (FIPS 180-4): Every file is hashed with SHA-256 at the moment of ingestion; the digest is locked into the chain of custody record before the file reaches storage, providing tamper-evident integrity verification.
- AES-256-GCM (FIPS 197): Admitted evidence files are encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM, ensuring confidentiality and authenticated encryption of all stored material.
- RFC 3161 (Internet X.509 PKI Time-Stamp Protocol): Evidence exports can be anchored to an external Trusted Timestamping Authority via RFC 3161 tokens, producing a cryptographically verifiable proof of existence at a point in time.
- W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0: A signed Verifiable Credential of type EvidenceCollection is issued for each evidence item at ingestion, serialised as a compact JWT with an Ed25519 signature, and used to assert provenance and support custody transfers.
- EXIF / ISO 12234-2 (JEITA CP-3451): Automated metadata extraction reads EXIF tags from image evidence, recovering device make and model, capture timestamps, GPS coordinates, and camera settings without manual cataloguing.
- ISO 19005 (PDF/A-1B / 2B / 3B / 4F): Evidence packages exported for court use can be rendered as PDF/A archival documents conforming to the applicable ISO 19005 part, ensuring long-term reproducibility and acceptance under legal disclosure rules.
- IANA Media Types / MIME (RFC 2045, RFC 2046): Each uploaded file is classified against its IANA media type at the validation boundary; MIME type drives format compliance checking, OCR eligibility, thumbnail rendering, and export handling across 40-plus supported formats.
Last Reviewed: 2026-02-23 Last Updated: 2026-04-14