Video data recovery for a CCTV system by reverse engineering

This paper explains how the extended data analysis approach by reverse engineering the file system of a commercial digital video recorder (DVR) was performed, without the CCTV hardware and software, or part of data corrupted. With a little modification in processing, it was shown that the raw video data could be recovered for use as evidence, and resulting video could be viewed by standard media player. If, however, in occasions when only a disk is given without the CCTV system itself, or time is constraint to produce any fruitful result, the task becomes much more difficult. Then a more pragmatic approach of reverse engineering the system, by eavesdropping the data structures of files while running the application software can be employed, to achieve useful outcomes in a more efficient way.