Welcome back, aspiring digital investigators!
Over the last few years, drones have moved from being niche gadgets to becoming one of the most influential technologies on the modern battlefield and far beyond it. The war in Ukraine accelerated this shift dramatically. During the conflict, drones evolved at an incredible pace, transforming from simple reconnaissance tools into precision strike platforms, electronic warfare assets, and logistics tools. This rapid adoption did not stop with military forces. Criminal organizations, including cartels and smuggling networks, quickly recognized the potential of drones for surveillance and contraband delivery. As drones became cheaper, more capable, and easier to modify, their use expanded into both legal and illegal activities. This created a clear need for digital forensics specialists who can analyze captured drones and extract meaningful information from them.
Modern drones are packed with memory chips, sensors, logs, and media files. Each of these components can tell a story about where the drone has been, how it was used, and who may have been controlling it. At its core, digital forensics is about understanding devices that store data. If something has memory, it can be examined.
U.S. Department of Defense Drone Dominance Initiative
Recognizing how critical drones have become, the United States government launched a major initiative focused on drone development and deployment. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced a one-billion-dollar “drone dominance” program aimed at equipping the U.S. military with large numbers of cheap, scalable attack drones.
Modern conflicts have shown that it makes little sense to shoot down inexpensive drones using missiles that cost millions of dollars. The program focuses on producing tens of thousands of small drones by 2026 and hundreds of thousands by 2027. The focus has shifted away from a quality-over-quantity mindset toward deploying unmanned systems at scale. Analysts must be prepared to examine drone hardware and data just as routinely as laptops, phones, or servers.
Drone Platforms and Their Operational Roles
Not all drones are built for the same mission. Different models serve very specific roles depending on their design, range, payload, and level of control. On the battlefield, FPV drones are often used as precision strike weapons. These drones are lightweight, fast, and manually piloted in real time, allowing operators to guide them directly into high-value targets. Footage from Ukraine shows drones intercepting and destroying larger systems, including loitering munitions carrying explosive payloads.
To counter electronic warfare and jamming, many battlefield drones are now launched using thin fiber optic cables instead of radio signals. These cables physically connect the drone to the operator, making jamming ineffective. In heavily contested areas, forests are often covered with discarded fiber optic lines, forming spider-web-like patterns that reflect sunlight. Images from regions such as Kupiansk show how widespread this technique has become.
Outside of combat zones, drones serve entirely different purposes. Commercial drones are used for photography, mapping, agriculture, and infrastructure inspection. Criminal groups may use similar platforms for smuggling, reconnaissance, or intimidation. Each use case leaves behind different types of forensic evidence, which is why understanding drone models and their intended roles is so important during an investigation.
DroneXtractor – A Forensic Toolkit for DJI Drones
To make sense of all this data, we need specialized tools. One such tool is DroneXtractor, an open-source digital forensics suite available on GitHub and written in Golang. DroneXtractor is designed specifically for DJI drones and focuses on extracting and analyzing telemetry, sensor values, and flight data.
The tool allows investigators to visualize flight paths, audit drone activity, and extract data from multiple file formats. It is suitable for law enforcement investigations, military analysis, and incident response scenarios where understanding drone behavior is critical. With this foundation in mind, let us take a closer look at its main features.
Feature 1 – DJI File Parsing
DroneXtractor supports parsing common DJI file formats such as CSV, KML, and GPX. These files often contain flight logs, GPS coordinates, timestamps, altitude data, and other telemetry values recorded during a drone’s operation. The tool allows investigators to extract this information and convert it into alternative formats for easier analysis or sharing.
In practical terms, this feature can help law enforcement reconstruct where a drone was launched, the route it followed, and where it landed. For military analysts, parsed telemetry data can reveal patrol routes, observation points, or staging areas used by adversaries. Even a single flight log can provide valuable insight into patterns of movement and operational habits.
Feature 2 – Steganography
Steganography refers to hiding information within other files, such as images or videos. DroneXtractor includes a steganography suite that can extract telemetry and other embedded data from media captured by DJI drones. This hidden data can then be exported into several different file formats for further examination.
This capability is particularly useful because drone footage often appears harmless at first glance. An image or video shared online may still contain timestamps, unique identifiers and sensor readings embedded within it. For police investigations, this can link media to a specific location or event.
Feature 3 – Telemetry Visualization
Understanding raw numbers can be difficult, which is why visualization matters. DroneXtractor includes tools that generate flight path maps and telemetry graphs. The flight path mapping generator creates a visual map showing where the drone traveled and the route it followed. The telemetry graph visualizer plots sensor values such as altitude, speed, and battery levels over time.
Investigators can clearly show how a drone behaved during a flight, identify unusual movements, or detect signs of manual intervention. Military analysts can use these visual tools to assess mission intent, identify reconnaissance patterns, or confirm whether a drone deviated from its expected route.
Feature 4 – Flight and Integrity Analysis
The flight and integrity analysis feature focuses on detecting anomalies. The tool reviews all recorded telemetry values, calculates expected variance, and checks for suspicious gaps or inconsistencies in the data. These gaps may indicate file corruption, tampering, or attempts to hide certain actions.
Missing data can be just as meaningful as recorded data. Law enforcement can use this feature to determine whether logs were altered after a crime. Military analysts can identify signs of interference and malfunction, helping them assess the reliability of captured drone intelligence.
Usage
DroneXtract is built in Go, so before anything else you need to have Go installed on your system. This makes the tool portable and easy to deploy, even in restricted or offline environments such as incident response labs or field investigations.
We begin by copying the project to our computer
bash# > git clone https://github.com/ANG13T/DroneXtract.git
To build and run DroneXtract from source, you start by enabling Go modules. This allows Go to correctly manage dependencies used by the tool.
bash# > $ export GO111MODULE=on
Next, you fetch all required dependencies defined in the project. This step prepares your environment and ensures all components DroneXtract relies on are available.
bash# > go get ./…
Once everything is in place, you can launch the tool directly:
bash# > go run main.go
At this point, DroneXtract is ready to be used for parsing files, visualizing telemetry, and performing integrity analysis on DJI drone data. The entire process runs locally, which is important when handling sensitive or classified material.
Airdata Usage
DJI drones store detailed flight information in .TXT flight logs. These files are not immediately usable for forensic analysis, so an intermediate step is required. For this, we rely on Airdata’s Flight Data Analysis tool, which converts DJI logs into standard forensic-friendly formats.
You can find the link here
Once the flight logs are processed through Airdata, the resulting files can be used directly with DroneXtract:
Airdata CSV output files can be used with:
1) the CSV parser
2) the flight path map generator
3) telemetry visualizations
Airdata KML output files can be used with:
1) the KML parser for geographic mapping
Airdata GPX output files can be used with:
1) the GPX parser for navigation-style flight reconstruction
This workflow allows investigators to move from a raw drone log to clear visual and analytical output without reverse-engineering proprietary formats themselves.
Configuration
DroneXtract also provides configuration options that allow you to tailor the analysis to your specific investigation. These settings are stored as environment variables in the .env file and control how much data is processed and how sensitive the analysis should be.
TELEMETRY_VIS_DOWNSAMPLE
This value controls how much telemetry data is sampled for visualization. Higher values reduce detail but improve performance, which is useful when working with very large flight logs.
FLIGHT_MAP_DOWNSAMPLE
This setting affects how many data points are used when generating the flight path map. It helps balance visual clarity with processing speed.
ANALYSIS_DOWNSAMPLE
This value controls the amount of data used during integrity analysis. It allows investigators to focus on meaningful changes without being overwhelmed by noise.
ANALYSIS_MAX_VARIANCE
This defines the maximum acceptable variance between minimum and maximum values during analysis. If this threshold is exceeded, it may indicate abnormal behavior, data corruption, or possible tampering.
Together, these settings give investigators control over both speed and precision, allowing DroneXtract to be effective in fast-paced operational environments and detailed post-incident forensic examinations.
Summary
Drone forensics is still a developing field, but its importance is growing rapidly. As drones become more capable, the need to analyze them effectively will only increase. Tools like DroneXtractor show how much valuable information can be recovered from devices that were once considered disposable.
Looking ahead, it would be ideal to see fast, offline forensic tools designed specifically for battlefield conditions. Being able to quickly extract flight data, locations, and operational details from captured enemy drones could provide immediate tactical advantages. Drone forensics may soon become as essential as traditional digital forensics on computers and mobile devices.
Source: HackersArise
Source Link: https://hackers-arise.com/digital-forensics-drone-forensics-for-battlefield-and-criminal-analysis/