Question

see if EXIF Date-taken has been changed?

Asked by: george82

Hi,

I suspect that a few photos that were forwarded to me have forged "Date-Taken" meta data.

Is there any way I can examine these files?

a google search for "change exif date" returns several results, like this application:
http://www.killertechtips.com/2008/04/13/how-to-edit-exif-tags-in-photos-to-change-the-date/

is there any way to tell if the file's date-taken data has been altered?

Thank you

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Asked On
2009-09-06 at 09:58:00ID24711134
Topics

Digital Forensics

,

Images & Photo Software

,

Miscellaneous Security

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: lherrouPosted on 2009-09-06 at 10:11:23ID: 25270663

george82,

Unfortunately, not really. There's no version tracking or anything similar in the EXIF data (although a few programs do provide for that capability).

From a forensic point of view, I'd probably use a HEX viewer/editor to view EXIF information, but you can also use any of several EXIF viewers/editors (http://www.kiwiczech.net/index.php?menu=353&sub=4 or http://www.colorpilot.com/exif.html for example). EXIF Pilot Lite (from the second link) cannot edit the EXIF information, so if you need to be able to state that no changes were made, using that program can ensure that you cannot accidentally modify the file.

Cheers,
LHerrou

 

by: george82Posted on 2009-09-06 at 10:51:53ID: 25270819

Thank you for the fast response lherrou;

That helps a lot.

You mentioned that a few programs *do* provide for that capability?

If so, can you share their links so I try them out?

Thanks again.

 

by: ChopOMaticPosted on 2009-09-06 at 11:44:49ID: 25271004

There are a ton of EXIF editors available. Here are a few:

http://www.exifer.friedemann.info/

http://www.opanda.com/en/pe/index.html

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Digital-Photo-Tools/EXIFeditor.shtml

http://www.digital-photo-software-guide.com/ct/co.php?xtxe

http://www.kiwiczech.net/index.php?menu=354&sub=5

I don't know if it allows EXIF editing or not, but IrfanView is free and an extremely popular image utility within the digital forensic community.

I don't suppose you have access to any other versions of the photo files, which you could use to do a comparative analysis?

 

by: george82Posted on 2009-09-06 at 12:11:29ID: 25271087

Sorry if I didn't make this clear - I have seen that there are a lot of EXIF editors , however I have not seen if there are any that show the previous versions of the EXIF data (like a version history). Wanted to check with lherrou if he has indeed seen any such applications.

Thanks

 

by: ChopOMaticPosted on 2009-09-06 at 12:27:47ID: 25271149

Gotcha. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm not aware of any historical versioning info within EXIF data, George.

 

by: lherrouPosted on 2009-09-06 at 12:30:09ID: 25271160

Well, the one I had in mind was Adobe Lightroom, which tracks edit history internally, but I believe can write some of that history into the EXIF data for the image.

 

by: ChopOMaticPosted on 2009-09-07 at 09:08:32ID: 25275955

I just used Lightroom to change the EXIF create date on a photo, then exported the photo for later testing. When I get to my lab I'll load the file up in one of my forensic tools and see if the real create date is anywhere to be found.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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