In digital forensics and various sectors like medicine and supply chain, blockchains play a crucial role in providing a secure and tamper-resistant system that meticulously records every detail, ensuring accountability. However, collaboration among different agencies, each with its own blockchains, creates challenges due to diverse protocols and a lack of interoperability, hindering seamless information sharing. Cross-chain technology has been introduced to address these challenges. Current research about blockchains in digital forensics, tends to focus on individual agencies, lacking a comprehensive approach to collaboration and the essential aspect of cross-chain functionality. This emphasizes the necessity for a framework capable of effectively addressing challenges in securely sharing case information, implementing access controls, and capturing provenance data across interconnected blockchains. Our solution, ForensiCross, is the first cross-chain solution specifically designed for digital forensics and provenance. It includes BridgeChain and features a unique communication protocol for cross-chain and multi-chain solutions. ForensiCross offers meticulous provenance capture and extraction methods, mathematical analysis to ensure reliability, scalability considerations for a distributed intermediary in collaborative blockchain contexts, and robust security measures against potential vulnerabilities and attacks. Analysis and evaluation results indicate that ForensiCross is secure and, despite a slight increase in communication time, outperforms in node count efficiency and has secure provenance extraction. As an all-encompassing solution, ForensiCross aims to simplify collaborative investigations by ensuring data integrity and traceability.

翻译：在数字取证以及医疗和供应链等多个领域，区块链通过提供安全且防篡改的系统，精确记录每个细节以确保可追溯性，发挥着至关重要的作用。然而，不同机构各自拥有独立的区块链，由于协议各异且缺乏互操作性，协作面临挑战，阻碍了信息的无缝共享。跨链技术的引入正是为了应对这些挑战。当前关于数字取证中区块链的研究往往侧重于单个机构，缺乏对协作及跨链功能这一关键方面的全面考量。这凸显了构建一个能够有效应对安全共享案件信息、实施访问控制以及在互连区块链间捕获溯源数据等挑战的框架的必要性。我们的解决方案 ForensiCross 是首个专为数字取证与溯源设计的跨链方案。它包含 BridgeChain，并采用独特的通信协议以支持跨链及多链场景。ForensiCross 提供了精细的溯源捕获与提取方法、确保可靠性的数学分析、针对协作区块链环境中分布式中介的可扩展性考量，以及抵御潜在漏洞与攻击的强健安全措施。分析与评估结果表明，ForensiCross 具有安全性，尽管通信时间略有增加，但在节点数量效率方面表现优异，并能实现安全的溯源提取。作为一个综合性解决方案，ForensiCross 旨在通过确保数据完整性与可追溯性，简化协作调查流程。