CARD IS LOCKED

[BayanatA.jo]

Hello, I recently started working on data recovery from Flash devices, and I have pc3000 flash. I've been getting a lot of SD and MicroSD cards that give the error CARD_IS_LOCKED!
Only this month I got 3 cards. and all showed the same error, to the point that I recently thought that I have an issue with my adapters.
Is there a solution for such thing? keep in mind that I didn't read the dump since the database doesn't include such pinouts and some are ldpc so its pointless.

Attachments

Screenshot 2023-09-30 162143.png (8.37 KiB) Viewed 2880 times

[labtech]

Have you tried using a healthy new card of the same model of any of the 3 cards you received to compare behavior?

[melvin]

Most of cases where a card has locked status is when they are damaged and the only solution is to read them via NAND protocol. Even when you get full ID. The same status you'll get in any tool like Easy Jtag with ISP connection.
Software shows locked status because it can't get any sector access so it thinks the card is locked.

[Gregory]

Software shows locked status because it can't get any sector access so it thinks the card is locked.

Not quite, the host knows that the card is locked by checking its status (CMD13). Card can be lock/unlock sending command CMD42 but you need to know the password.

Most of cases where a card has locked status is when they are damaged and the only solution is to read them via NAND protocol

...and yes probably the only method is NAND, but there are people who can bypass it in some cards.

More source:
Bypass:
https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2027/DEF%20CON%2027%20presentations/DEFCON-27-Nicolas-Oberli-Poking-the-S-in-SD-cards.PDF
About lock/unlock sd card:
https://media-www.micron.com/-/media/client/global/documents/products/technical-note/sd-cards/tnsd01_enable_sd_lock_unlock_in_linux.pdf?rev=03f03a6bc0f8435fafa93a8fc8e88988

[melvin]

I'm not even close to your experience at your workshop but i never had a client that would be aware of any card locking or password. But every single dead SD/mSD i checked in Easy-jtag had a locked status. And basing on their condition as beeing read over NAND, i would not expect them to unlock properly if possible. True that a controler can do more than a read over NAND + ECC correction in any tool.
You guys never shared a case on FB where it was possible.

[BayanatA.jo]

Thanks for the info everyone, appreciate it a lot