Chapter 2
ADVANCED FORENSIC FORMAT:
AN OPEN, EXTENSIBLE FORMATFOR DISK IMAGING
S. Garfinkel, D. Malan, K. Dubec, C. Stevens and C. Pham
Abstract

This paper describes the Advanced Forensic Format (AFF), which isdesigned as an alternative to current proprietary disk image formats.
AFF offers two significant benefits. First, it is more flexible because it
allows extensive metadata to be stored with images. Second, AFF images consume less disk space than images in other formats (e.g., EnCase
images). This paper also describes the Advanced Disk Imager (AImage),a new program for acquiring disk images that compares favorably withexisting alternatives.

Keywords: Disk imaging, image storage, Advanced Forensic Format (AFF)

1.

Introduction

Most forensic practitioners work with just one or a few disks at atime. A wife might bring her spouse’s laptop to an examiner to makea copy a few days before she files for divorce. Police might raid a drug
dealer’s apartment and seize a computer that was used for contacting
suppliers. In these cases, it is common practice to copy the drive’scontents sector-for-sector into a single file, a so-called “raw” or “dd”
copy. Some practitioners make a sector-for-sector copy of the original
disk to a second drive that is the same size as the original.
Raw images are widely used because they work with practically every
forensic tool available today. However, raw images are not compressed,
as a result, they can be very large—even if the drive itself contained very
little data.
The obvious way to solve the problem of data storage is to use a filecompressor like gzip [9] or bzip2 [20]. But neither gzip nor bzip2 allow

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ADVANCES IN DIGITAL FORENSICS – II

random access within a compressed file. Because many forensic tools
require random access to captured data just like a file system requires
random access to a physical disk, disk images that are compressed must
be decompressed before they can be used.
A second problem with raw images is the storage of data about theimage itself, i.e., its metadata. Because a raw image is a sector-for-sector
copy of the drive under investigation, the file cannot store metadata
such as the drive’s serial number, the name of the investigator who
performed the acquisition, or the date on which the disk was imaged.
When metadata is not stored in the image file itself, there is a chance that
it will become separated from the image file and lost—or even confusedwith the metadata of another drive.
After evaluating several of the existing alternatives for storing disk images, we decided to create the new Advanced Forensic Format (AFF TM )for our forensic work. AFF is open and extensible, and unencumbered bypatents and trade secrets. Its open-source implementation is distributed
under a license that allows its code to be freely integrated into otheropen-source and propriety programs.
AFF is extensible—new features can be added in a manner that maintains forward and backward compatibility. This extensibility allows older
programs to read AFF files created by newer programs, and it allows
newer AFF programs to read older AFF files that lack newer features.
This paper presents our research on the design and implementationof AFF. We have used AFF to store more than one terabyte of datafrom imaged hard drives using less than 200 GB of storage. We are
currently working to improve the functionality and performance of the
AFF implementation and associated tools.

2.

Related Work

Several formats exist for forensic images, but none offers AFF’s combination of openness and extensibility. This section surveys the mostcommon formats in use today. Some commercially-available tools support formats other than their own. Nevertheless, support for proprietary
formats, which is often the result of reverse engineering, tends to be incomplete.

2.1

EnCase Format

Guidance Software’s EnCase Forensic [12] is perhaps the de facto standard for forensic analysis in law enforcement. It uses a proprietary format for images based on ASR Data’s Expert Witness Compression Format [4]. EnCase’s Evidence File format (Figure 1) contains a physical19

Garfinkel, et al.

Figure 1.

EnCase format.

bitstream of an acquired disk, prefixed with a “Case Info” header, interlaced with CRCs for every block of 64 sectors (32 KB), and followed bya footer containing an MD5 hash for the entire bitstream. The header
contains the date and time of acquisition, examiner’s name, notes on
the acquisition, and an optional password; the header concludes with its
own CRC.
The EnCase format is compressible and searchable. Compression isblock-based [17], and “jump tables” and “file pointers” are maintainedin the format’s header or between blocks “to enhance speed” [14]. Disk
images can be split into multiple files (e.g., for archival to CD or DVD).
A limitation of the EnCase format is that image files must be less than
2 GB in size. As a result, EnCase images are typically stored in directories with the individual file’s given names (e.g., FILE.E01, FILE.E02,
etc.). The format also limits the type and quantity of metadata that canbe associated with an image. Some vendors have achieved limited compatibility by reverse-engineering the format; however, these attempts are
generally incomplete.

Table 1.

Comparison of AFF and EnCase (all values in MB).
Zeroes

Shakespeare

Random

AFF

-X1
-X6
-X9

28
6
6

2879
2450
2443

6301
6301
6301

Encase“Good”“Best”

33
12

3066
2846

6303
6303

Table 1 compares the sizes of AFF and EnCase images of a 6 GB hard
drive. The hard drive was filled with: (i) all zeroes, (ii) the complete
works of William Shakespeare repeated approximately 1,200 times, and(iii) random data. AFF used gzip compression performed at levels “1,”“6” and “9” with aimage -X1, -X6 and -X9 options. EnCase compression
was performed using the “Good” and “Best” levels.

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2.2

ADVANCES IN DIGITAL FORENSICS – II

Forensic Toolkit (FTK) Formats

AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit (FTK) [1] is a popular alternative to
EnCase. It supports the storage of disk images in EnCase’s file format
or SMART’s file format (Section 2.9), as well as in raw format and an
older version of Safeback’s format (Section 2.7).

2.3

ILook Formats

ILook Investigator v8 [15] and its disk-imaging counterpart, IXimager, offer three proprietary, authenticated image formats: compressed(IDIF), non-compressed (IRBF) and encrypted (IEIF). Few technicaldetails have been disclosed publicly. However, IXimager’s online documentation [15] provides some insights: IDIF “includes protective mechanisms to detect changes from the source image entity to the output
form” and supports “logging of user actions within the confines of thatevent.” IRBF is similar to IDIF, except that disk images are left uncompressed. IEIF encrypts disk mages. To facilitate compatibility with
ILook Investigator v7 and other forensic tools, IXimager allows for thetransformation of each of these formats into raw format.

2.4

ProDiscover Format

Technology Pathways’ ProDiscover family of security tools [23] uses
the ProDiscover Image File Format [22]. It consists of five parts: a 16byte image file header, which includes a signature and version number for
an image; a 681-byte image data header, which contains user-provided
metadata about the image; image data, which comprises a single blockof uncompressed data or an array of blocks of compressed data; an arrayof compressed blocks sizes (if the image data is compressed); and i/olog errors describing any problems during the image’s acquisition. The
format is fairly well documented, but it is not extensible.

2.5

PyFlag Format

PyFlag [17] is a “Forensic and Log Analysis GUI” developed by theAustralian Department of Defence. It uses sgzip, a seekable variant of
the gzip format. (PyFlag can also read and write ASR Data’s Expert
Witness Compression Format [19].) By compressing blocks (32 KB bydefault) individually, sgzip allows for rapid accessing of a disk image by
forensic software without the need to first decompress the entire image.
The format does not associate metadata with images [18, 19].

Garfinkel, et al.

2.6

21

RAID Format

Relatively few technical details of DIBS USA’s Rapid Action Imaging
Device (RAID) [8] are publicly available. It offers “built-in integrity
checking” and is designed to create an identical copy in raw format of
one disk on another. The copy can then “be inserted into a forensic
workstation” [7].

2.7

SafeBack Format

SafeBack [3] is a DOS-based utility designed to create exact copies
of entire disks or partitions. It offers a “self-authenticating” format forimages, whereby SHA-256 hashes are stored along with data to ensure
the integrity of images. SafeBack’s developers claim that the software“safeguards the internally stored SHA-256 values” [3].

2.8

SDi32 Format

Vogon International’s SDi32 [25] imaging software is designed to be
used with write-blocking hardware. It is capable of making identicalcopies of disks to tape, disk or file, with optional CRC32 and MD5
fingerprints. The copies are stored in raw format.

2.9

SMART Formats

SMART [5] is a software utility for Linux designed by the original authors of Expert Witness (now sold under the name EnCase) [12]. It canstore disk images as pure bitstreams (compressed or uncompressed) orin ASR Data’s Expert Witness Compression Format [4]. Images in thelatter format can be stored as a single file or in multiple segment files,
consisting of a standard 13-byte header followed by a series of sections,each of type “header,” “volume,” “table,” “next” or “done.” Each section includes its type string, a 64-bit offset to the next section, its 64-bit
size, padding, and a CRC, in addition to actual data or comments, if
applicable. Although the format’s “header” section supports free-form
notes, an image can have only one such section (in its first segment fileonly).

2.10

Comparison of Formats

Table 1 provides a comparison of the features offered by various fileformats. A format is considered to be “non-proprietary” if its specification is publicly available. It is “extensible” if it supports the storageof arbitrary metadata. It is “seekably compressed” if it can be searchedwithout being uncompressed in its entirety. A bullet (•) indicates sup-22

ADVANCES IN DIGITAL FORENSICS – II
Table 2.

AFF
EnCaseILook
ProDiscover
PyFlagRAID
SafeBack
SDi32
SMART

Summary of features supported by various file formats.
Extensible

Non-Proprietary

Compressed & Seekable

•

•

•
•
•
•
•

?
•
•
•
?

?
•
•

port for a feature, while a question mark (?) indicates that support fora feature is not disclosed publicly. FTK is omitted because it uses othertools’ formats.

2.11

Digital Evidence Bags

Turner proposed the concept of a Digital Evidence Bag (DEB) [24] asa “wrapper” or metaformat for storing digital evidence from disparate
sources. The DEB format consists of a directory that includes a tag file,
one or more index files, and one or more bag files. The tag file is a text filethat contains metadata such as the name and organization of the forensic
examiner, hashes for the contained information, and data definitions.
Several prototype tools have been created for DEBs, including a bagviewer and a selective imager.

3.

Advanced Forensic Format

The Advanced Forensic Format (AFF) is a single, flexible format thatcan be used for a variety of tasks. This section discusses AFF’s design
goals and its two-layered architecture that helps achieve the design goals.

3.1

AFF Goals

The specific design goals for AFF are provided below. We believe thatAFF delivers on all these goals.
Ability to store disk images with or without compression.
Ability to store disk images of any size.
Ability to store metadata within disk images or separately.

Garfinkel, et al.

23

Ability to store images in a single file of any size or split among
multiple files.
Arbitrary metadata as user-defined name/value pairs.
Extensibility.
Simple design.
Multiple platform, open source implementation.
Freedom from intellectual property restrictions.
Provisions for internal self-consistency checking, so that part ofan image can be recovered even if other parts are corrupted orotherwise lost.
Provisions for certifying the authenticity of evidence files with traditional hash functions (e.g., MD5 and SHA-1) and advanced digital signatures based on X.509(v)3 certificates.

3.2

AFF Layers

Many of the design goals are accomplished by partitioning the AFF
format into two layers: the disk-representation layer and the data-storage
layer. The disk-representation layer defines a schema that is used forstoring disk images and associated metadata. The data-storage layer
specifies how the named AFF segments are stored in an actual file. We
have developed two data-storage implementations.

3.2.1
AFF Disk-Representation Layer.
AFF’s disk-representation layer defines specific segment names that are used for representing all the information associated with a disk image. Each AFF
segment consists of a segment name, a 32-bit “flag,” and a data payload. The name and the data payload can be between 0 and 2 32 − 1 =4,294,967,295 bytes long. In practice, segment names are less than 32
bytes, while the data payload is less than 16 MB.
AFF 1.0 supports two kinds of segments: metadata segments, which
are used for holding information about the disk image, and data segments called “pages,” which are used for holding the imaged disk information itself.
Metadata segments can be created when a disk is accessioned or aftera disk is imaged. For example, device sn is the name of the segmentused to hold the disk’s serial number, while date acquired holds thetime that the disk image was acquired.

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ADVANCES IN DIGITAL FORENSICS – II

Two special segments are accession gid, which holds a 128-bit globally unique identifier that is different each time the disk imaging programis run, and badflag, which holds a 512-byte block of data that identifies
blocks in the data segments that are “bad” (i.e., cannot be read). The
existence of the badflag makes it possible for forensic tools to distinguish between sectors that cannot be read and sectors that are filledwith NULLs or another form of constant data, something that is notpossible with traditional disk forensic tools. Tools that do not support
the badflag will interpret each “bad” sector as a sector that begins
with the words “BAD SECTOR” followed by random data; these sectors can thus be identified as being bad if they are encountered by ahuman examiner. Alternatively, AFF can be configured to return bad
sectors as sectors filled with NULLs. Table 3 provides a complete list of
the segment names defined in AFF 1.0.
Data segments hold the actual data copied from the disk being examined. All data segments must be the same size; this size is determinedwhen the image file is created and stored in a segment named pagesize.
Although pagesize can be any value, common choices are 2 20 (1 MB)
and 224 (16 MB).
Segments are given sequential names page 0, page 1, . . ., page n,
where n is as large as is necessary. The segment (page) number and byte
offset within the uncompressed segment of any 512-byte sector i in the
AFF file are determined by the formulas:

page number =i × 512
pagesize

offset = (i × 512) − (page #) × pagesize

(1)
(2)

AFF data pages can be compressed with the open-source zlib [10]or they can be left uncompressed. The data page’s 32-bit flag encodes
if the page is compressed or not. Compressed AFF files consume lessspace but take more time to create; this is because the time taken to
write uncompressed data is typically shorter than the combined time
taken to compress data and write the compressed data. Interestingly,
compressed files can actually be faster to read than uncompressed files
as modern computers can read and uncompress data faster than they
can read the equivalent uncompressed data of a hard drive. The decision
to compress or not to compress can be made when an image is acquired.
Alternatively, an uncompressed file can be compressed later.
Checksums and signatures can be used to certify that data in theimage data segments has not been accidentally or intentionally modified

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Garfinkel, et al.

Table 3.

AFF segments defined in the AFF 1.0 specification.

Segment Name

AFFLIB Symbol

Meaning—

AF IGNORE

Ignore this segment; zero-length name.

dir

AF DIRECTORY

AFF directory; should be the last segment.

Housekeeping Segments

AFF Segments (pertaining to the entire image)
pagesize

AF SEGSIZE

Size (in bytes) of each uncompressed AFF
data page is stored in segment “flag” field.

imagesize

AF IMAGESIZE

Size (in bytes) of the complete image isstored in the segment data area. (8-bytevalue).

badsectors

AF BADSECTORS

Number of 512-byte sectors in the image
that were marked as “bad.”badflag

AF BADFLAG

512-byte flag that is used to denote sectors
in the image file that could not be readfrom the media.

blanksectors

AF BLANKSECTORS

Number of sectors in the image file thatare completely blank (i.e., filled with 512
ASCII NULLs.)

AFF Pages (repeated for each data segment)
page%dAF PAGE

The actual data of page %d. Data is compressed if the AF PAGE COMPRESSED bit in theflag is set.

page md5 %d

AF PAGE MD5HASH

MD5 of the uncompressed page.

page md5 sig%d

AF PAGE MD5SIG

PKCS7 signature of page %d’s MD5.

page sha1 %d

AF PAGE SHA1HASH

SHA-1 of the uncompressed page.

page sha1 sig%d

AF PAGE SHA1SIG

PKCS7 signature of page %d’s SHA-1.

Some AFF Segments created by the Advanced Disk Imager
case num

AF CASE NUM

Case number for EnCase compatibility.

image gid

AF IMAGE GID

A unique 128-bit image identifier.

imaging commandline

AF IMAGING COMMAND LINE

Complete command used to create image.

imaging date

AF IMAGING DATE

Date and time when imaging was started.

imaging notes

AF IMAGING NOTES

Notes made by the forensic examiner when
the imaging was started.

imaging device

AF IMAGING DEVICE

Device used as the source of the image.

26

ADVANCES IN DIGITAL FORENSICS – IIafter it was acquired. AFF 1.0 supports two modes of certification:hashes and digital signatures.
It is common practice in the forensic community to record MD5 or
SHA-1 hashes of an image. AFF 1.0 allows these hashes to be recorded
for the entire image and for each individual data segment. The hashvalues are stored in specially named segments.
AFF 1.0 provides an additional level of certification by supporting theinclusion of PKCS #7 [16] digital signatures. These signatures can also
be recorded for the entire disk image and for individual data segments.
Because signatures are calculated on uncompressed data, it is possible
to acquire and digitally sign a disk image and then compress the image
without compromising the integrity of the digital signatures.

3.2.2
AFF Data-Storage Layer.
The data-storage layer
handles the task of storing the actual AFF segments. AFF 1.0 has two
storage formats. The AFF 1.0 Binary Format specifies that segments
are stored sequentially in one or more files. AFF 1.0 XML, on the other
hand, stores information in the XML format. The binary files are smallerand faster than the XML files. However, the standardized format of the
XML files makes them easier to use with non-forensic tools. In practice,
it is possible to store the actual disk image in an AFF binary file andthe disk’s metadata in an XML file, although this does introduce thepossibility that the two files might become separated.
The original plan for AFF’s Binary Format was to use an open-source
B-tree implementation like Berkeley DB (BDB), the GNU Database
Manager (GDBM), or a similar system to store the segments as a seriesof name/value pairs. But BDB and GDBM are distributed under the
GNU Public License, which is unacceptable to many commercial software developers. (A licensed version of BDB with fewer restrictions canbe obtained from SleepyCat Software [21], but not for free.) The Apache
SDBM database has no such restrictions. However, our tests indicatethat SDBM creates sparse files exceeding 100 GB when used to store
just a few GB of image data. Note that because the files are sparse,
they do not take up all the space on disk. However, if a file is copied
to another disk, the unmapped sectors are filled with zeroes. Anotherconcern is that the layout of information in a B-tree file might be toocomplex to explain in court, should the need arise.
Consequently, we adopted a simple approach for storing AFF segments in a binary file. Each AFF 1.0 binary file consists of a header
followed by zero or more binary AFF segments. Each binary AFF segment consists of a header, a variable-length segment name, a 32-bit flag,a variable-length data area, and a segment footer. The segment’s length27

Garfinkel, et al.

Figure 2.

AFF file schematic.

Figure 3.

AFF segment schematic.

is stored in the header and footer, allowing for rapid bidirectional seeking
as only the headers and the footers need to be read.
Figures 2 and 3 present schematic representations of an AFF file andsegment, respectively. The AFF file schematic shows the file’s header
and AFF segments. The AFF segment schematic shows the segment’s
header, name, data and segment tail. Including the segment’s length at
the beginning and the end makes it possible to rapidly seek through alarge AFF file without having to read all of the data in each segment.
The AFF XML 1.0 Format is a simplistic encoding of name/value
segments as a series of XML objects. This XML encoding can be produced automatically from an AFF binary file using the afxml tool that
we have developed.

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4.

ADVANCES IN DIGITAL FORENSICS – II

AFF Library and Tools

AFFLIBTM is an implementation of AFF 1.0 written in C/C++. To
avoid forcing the programmer to understand segments, data segments,
compression, etc., AFFLIB implements a simple abstraction that makes
the AFF image file appear as two resources: a simple name/value database that can be accessed with traditional put and get semantics and a
stream that can be accessed using af open(), af read(), and af seek()function calls. If af open() is used to open a non-AFF file, the librarydefaults to a pass-through mode of operation, allowing AFF-aware programs to work equally well with raw files.
AFFLIB also supports an af write function call—even across compressed data segments—which makes it easier to write disk imaging programs.
The AFF source code comes with a set of tools including AImage:
Advanced Disk Imager (aimage), a program for converting AFF metadata into XML (afxml), a program for converting raw images to AFF
images and back (afconvert).
In addition, we have modified Sleuth Kit [6] to work with AFF files.
The modifications are relatively minor and have already been incorporated into Sleuth Kit’s distribution. When run interactively, no performance degradation is noticeable—not even on compressed AFF files.

5.

Advanced Disk Imager

In the early days of our forensics work, we acquired disk images using
the Unix dd [2] program. Although running dd with the correct arguments can be very fast, the program has several shortcomings. The dd
program does not automatically retry read attempts on bad sectors. If
there is a bad region on the disk, dd attempts to plod its way throughthe region, which can take a very long time. It is easy to corrupt a disk
by accidentally reversing or otherwise mistyping the values of the if=
and of= arguments. Finally, dd does not capture forensic metadata suchas the serial number of a hard drive or even the time of the acquisition.
Consequently, we decided to create a new disk imaging program. Our
Advanced Disk Imager (aimage) was developed specifically for the demanding task of imaging large numbers of hard drives purchased on thesecondary market. We have tested aimage on several hundred different
hard drives and have found it to be a very powerful disk-imaging tool.
Written in C++, aimage is designed to be run from the commandline. It can image any device that is visible to the operating system. The
program can also create an image from data sent to it over a network
using an unencrypted or encrypted TCP connection.

29

Garfinkel, et al.

Figure 4.

Screenshot of aimage in action.

The aimage program can create a raw file (in the so-called “dd” format), an AFF file, or both files at the same time. The program offersa real-time display on a 80×24 screen detailing the status of the image
capture. By using a text-based interface, aimage can be run from abootable Linux distribution on computers that do not support the X
Window System. A screenshot of aimage is shown in Figure 4.
A sophisticated error-handling system causes aimage to read large
data blocks unless it encounters an error, in which case it switches toa smaller block size and attempts to re-read the data. If it encounters
too many errors in a row the program goes to the end of the disk andattempts to image the remaining disk sectors in reverse. This approach,pioneered by the dd rescue [11] forensics program, works well to recover disks that have a single region of bad blocks. A future versionof aimage will allow the remaining bad region to be further bisected sothat additional good blocks can be recovered.
The aimage program calculates MD5 and SHA-1 hashes of a disk as
the disk is imaged. Plans are underway to implement digital signatures
as prescribed by the AFF standard.

6.

Conclusions

The Advanced Forensic Format (AFF) is an attractive, tested system
for storing forensic disk images. With the Advanced Disk Imager we

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ADVANCES IN DIGITAL FORENSICS – IIhave collected images from nearly a thousand hard drives over the past
year. AFF’s tools have enabled us to work with these images quickly,
efficiently and at a very high level. AFFLIB’s support of additional fileformats, e.g., EnCase and Expert Witness, permits the tools to be used
for a variety of disk image formats without the need for modification ortranslation. AFF and AFFLIB may be downloaded from www.afflib.org.

Acknowledgements
Brian Carrier and Peter Wayner provided useful feedback on the initial design of the AFF system. Basis Technology Corp. provided substantial funding for the AFF effort. Simson Garfinkel was supported bya fellowship from the Center for Research on Computation and Society, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
David Malan was partially supported by NSF Trusted Computing Grant
CCR-0310877. The support of this work by Michael Smith of Harvard
University is greatly appreciated. AFF and AFFLIB are trademarks of
Simson Garfinkel and Basis Technology, Inc.

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