OCR challenges

xandstorm · 2024-05-20T14:55:05Z

Hello everyone, Trying to start a discussion concerning OCR challenges. Over the past 10 years, I have seen a steady increase in artefacts that can not be indexed / searched adequately because they are image related files, specifically png's and jpg's originating from mobile devices. In a recent case i had over 100K (case relevant) photo images to process and analyse. What i do to process and analyse now is exporting the image files, OCR them with a commercial non DFIR OCR tool and then import them back into the case as a logical image file. This is however a very time and resource consuming process, sometimes taking over a week, which is too long. Also, cost wise this is becoming more and more of an issue as OCR companies developed a tendency to charge by the core instaed of the machine. When contacting these companies the first question they ask is how many files you need to OCR on a yearly basis. From a DFIR perspective this is a question that is difficult to answer. I have tried the OCR capabilities of several of the commercial "standard" DFIR tools, and also various commercial non DFIR OCR tools. My personal opinion is that commercial non DFIR OCR tools are becoming too expensive (received a quote for 60K) for small DFIR companies. The DFIR tools that have OCR integrated (a lot still don't!) are actually not really good at it, causing loss of information that could be crucial for the case. I am curious how other small DFIR firms / consultants are currently addressing OCR challenges. Your feedback is higly appreciated. Cheers! Lex

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domsalvator

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27/05/2024 12:52 pm

Thanks for starting this discussion on OCR challenges. It sounds like you're dealing with a tough situation. Have you considered open-source options like Tesseract to cut costs?

Curious to hear how others are managing these issues.

Also, cloud-based OCR services might offer more flexible pricing based on usage. Streamlining your workflow with batch-processing scripts could also save time.

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