This paper describes X-Online, a Web application designed to interface with a password-recovery and/or decryption tool such as AccessData's Distributed Network Attack (DNAtrade) tool.
X-Online allows for submission of documents in a highly secure and reliable manner for digital forensic processing. The output of the digital forensic tool interfaced with X-Online is displayed back to the user. The authors anticipate that web service-based applications such as X-Online will be increasingly important as e-forensic tools. This paper provides an overview of the need for such systems, describes our system's design, and discuss the key security and reliability aspects associated with the system. X-Online is based on two different operating system platforms (Linux and Windows) and uses a secure Web server as well as additional authentication protocols for security. File sharing supports interfacing to the widely used DNA Digital Decryption tool, and protecting this service was accordingly a major component of our overall security design. The authors also discuss the features that they plan to support in the future, and their designs to use it in connection with a broader forensic research initiative. (Published abstract provided).