New Developments in Mobile Phone Forensics and Recovery

We have a love-hate relationship with new technologies. Yes, we want our computers and mobile devices to get faster, but the technology is advancing so quickly that it takes a lot of time and effort for us to research new ways to get at that data when a device fails.

So, when Samsung started switching from eMMC memory to UFS memory in their phones we were stuck. We had no way to work on these devices if the motherboard was destroyed. We started looking for solutions and after some time, we finally worked out a way to read these new chips.

We have successfully recovered data from UFS based devices including the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Note 5 when no one else could get the data!!

In the same week, a customer sent in a Samsung Galaxy S7 that was working but it was passcode locked. There are no forensics tools on the market that can bypass the passcode lock on this phone. However, one our Senior Forensics Examiners spent hours with it, hacking away at the phone’s firmware and ended up bypassing the lock and getting a full physical acquisition of the device.  BIG WIN!

We get excited when we expand our capabilities.  It means more people can get their precious data back!  And for our Law Enforcement friends – it means we can solve more crimes.