Examining black-box forensic tools in digital vehicle forensics: Capabilities, limitations, and practical implications

Proprietary “black-box” forensic tools such as Bosch Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) and Berla iVe are widely deployed in vehicle event data recorder (EDR) and infotainment system investigations. While they offer rapid acquisition, broad hardware coverage, and outputs tailored for legal contexts, their internal decoding logic is opaque and complex to validate independently. This paper presents two controlled demonstrations simulating typical extraction scenarios: (1) EDR field completeness and temporal alignment testing, and (2) infotainment data completeness and parsing accuracy across simulated tool variants. In Demonstration 1, black-box output exhibited quantization, timestamp offsets, and missing fields that could materially alter accident reconstruction. In Demonstration 2, simulated GPS track extractions demonstrated spatial downsampling, coordinate rounding, and timezone misinterpretation, each of which could undermine cross-source correlation. Benefits, challenges, and limitations of commercial automotive forensic tools are discussed, alongside recommendations for independent validation, open-source crosschecks, and forensic quality assurance standards. The results underscore the importance of transparent methodologies and reproducible testing in the use of proprietary automotive forensic solutions. • Evaluates reliability of black-box tools in digital vehicle forensics. • Simulates EDR and infotainment data extraction errors without proprietary tools. • Quantifies spatial, temporal, and semantic deviations in tool outputs. • Identifies legal, technical, and coverage limitations of Bosch CDR and Berla iVe. • Recommends validation practices and open-source cross-checking approaches.