Accessing Android Smartphone Memory

[higgsboson]

While XRY & Cellebrite are Industry leaders ,they are out of reach of small players.
has someone done any research on smartphone recovery ? Is there any less expensive tools to image phone memory ?
I am interested to add phone recovery business and looking for hardware based solution as most of the softwares don't work or needs phone to be rooted first which adds possible crash of OS.

[Jar]

Simple JTAG can get many android based phones.

[HaQue]

further to this, lookup the phone jtag tools, often referred to as boxes or whatever. stuff like this I assume: http://easy-jtag.com but there are many more..
just keep buying addons as your jobs progress and you need them

say goodbye to ALL your free time and much of your other as well!

[mr_spokk]

Hi, no jtag or boxes needed.
Just Cygwin, Netcat and ADB... + the commands needed

[drHDD]

Yes... if phone in good working condition.

[mr_spokk]

Yes... if phone in good working condition.

Both XRY & Cellebrite only works with good working units (as I know of), there by my answer.

[drHDD]

Both XRY & Cellebrite only works with good working units (as I know of), there by my answer.

but there are many more..

It's look like we are talking about not only XRY & Cellebrite. I had case where phone was not working but I got data through JTAG.

[HaQue]

I am not talking about either one. I mean the phone hacking tools that I guess people use to unlock them or whatever - I haven't owned one of the tools yet though. I believe it gives access to the eMMC in some cases

[jermy]

IMHO paying a few hundred bucks for a second hand rather than wasting/spending time on each phone to jtag + scripting commands supposed to be acceptable

[higgsboson]

Thanks all for different solutions & information.
I conclude Jtag could be one of the solution besides some softwares as suggested by mr_spokk.
Disadvantage of jtag is you will have break open phone which voids warranty & not all customers are ready to allow opening .
As hardware solution is needed which will directly enable debug mode & access to phone memory. Once we get image of phone memory we can do raw recovery .
I am curious for software based ways & will put my results here.
Someone has any other ideas pls. share

[DRUG]

As hardware solution is needed which will directly enable debug mode & access to phone memory. Once we get image of phone memory we can do raw recovery .

You can root the phone, enable debug and the raw image the memory, (I dont know if that works with iPhones, it may work somehow but you will need tony stark to retrive readable data.)

[HaQue]

the hipsters usually have all their crap on iCloud anyway, or in the backup files, if they know it or not. I agree with DRUG - though I would like to again say you are really going to need to take into account the amount of time playing with all kinds of phones, versions of OS, conditions of device.. especially if you are learning most of it including basics from scratch. IMHO, a currently operating shop would find it challenging as a new endeavour if it is 1 or 2 people only

[higgsboson]

Actually rooting is highly unsafe process . I have seen several phones get damaged if something goes wrong.

[HaQue]

Actually rooting is highly unsafe process . I have seen several phones get damaged if something goes wrong.

and I have 5 kids to prove it!

lots of things are unsafe, but you have to weigh each case up and decide. If you are going to do it for data recovery, you wont just not root the phone and say it is unsafe... there are going to be allowances made, and sometimes the only way is not really ideal.

I don't believe rooting the phone is all that bad, but more the user actions after that is more worrying like installing software that is cracked or from untrusted source

[Chris Zhang]

Actually rooting is highly unsafe process . I have seen several phones get damaged if something goes wrong.

I have never rooted my phone.

[HaQue]

Rule 34!!

[Chris Zhang]

Rule 34!!

What does the rule 34 mean？

[HaQue]

"rule #34 - If it exists there IS porn of it"