2012
DG HOME awarded funds to UCD Centre for Cybersecurity & Cybercrime Investigation (UCD-CCI) to establish a community of software developers, from the law enforcement community, who would create free forensic tools for law enforcement.
2015
First iteration of project concluded with the production of 7 forensic tools, a methodology and framework for future software development and a community of over 100 software developers and testers from EU law enforcement agencies.
UCD-CCI were successful in pursuing additional funding to extend the scope of the initiative, by incorporating additional tool development and enhancing tool maintenance.
2017
The second FREETOOL project had produced 12 comprehensive tools for digital forensics and cybercrime investigations.
Thanks to Europol, for their valued assistance with promotion and dissemination to the community, and The European Cybercrime Training and Education Group (ECTEG), for incorporating FREETOOL outputs in their training, the tools produced by the project are now being used by thousands of law enforcement agents from across the world.
The increased community feedback has prompted the tool refinement initiatives in the latest project.
2019
The main objective of FREETOOL v3.0 is to vastly enhance the usability and accessibility of the outputs from previous FREETOOL projects through a comprehensive programme of large scale user testing, tool refinement, tool packaging and resource development.
Work is well underway in the latest iteration of the FREETOOL project, with some exciting developments to be released by the end of the project, in the final quarter of 2021.
2022
Collaborating with the European Anti-Cybercrime Technology Development Association (EACTDA), six FREETOOL applications underwent further development and testing. The Tools4LEAs project funded this initiative. Tools4LEAs aims to deliver dependable, well-tested tools to European public security practitioners for free.
The tools produced by the FREETOOL project are completely free of charge but are strictly for the law enforcement community only.
This community is considered to be any government or public service body that has a mandate to investigate breaches of regional legislation.
such as:
Police, Revenue investigators, National CERTS/CSIRTS, Defence Forces, etc.
The link below will lead to a secure platform where the tools can be accessed.
New account requests are subject to a review process, unless the agency has been pre-approved.
1. What is FREETOOL
FREETOOL is an EU-funded project (Grant Agreement no: 821947) that began in 2012. The project's goal was to address the need for customised cybercrime tools, developed by law enforcement for law enforcement. These tools are then distributed to law enforcement free of charge. The FREETOOL website is managed by the UCD Centre for Cyber Security and Cybercrime Investigation, University College Dublin (UCD-CCI).
2. Processing of personal data
This website logs visitor IP addresses and user interaction with the site. This is common behaviour for web servers and the data collected is not used for any purposes other than ensuring the security and functionality of the site. Logs are not shared with anyone except administrative staff for the reasons outlined.
3. Cookies
We do not store or generate cookies for any reason.
4. Do we change this privacy statement?
We regularly review this privacy statement and will post any updates to it on this webpage. This privacy statement was last amended in October 2020.
5. Contact details
Please contact us if you have any concerns as to how your data is processed, or if you have some issues or queries concerning the FREETOOL website.
Data Controller and Administrator of the website:
UCD Centre for Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Investigation (UCD-CCI)
UCD School of Computer Science
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
Service Contact: freetool@ucd.ie