Cellular Forensics & Data Recovery

Cellular Forensics & Data Recovery

Published by johnbartley
06-30-2005

Cellular Forensics & Data Recovery

The excellent and thorough Tom's Hardware site here reviews a forensic (i.e., legal evidence-grade) data recovery program for cellphones.

Most folks don't believe that their cellphone nowadays is a computer, but they are. There are several standardized operating systems for cellphones. There's PalmOS, Linux, several variants on Microsoft's Windows CE (e.g., PocketPC for Phones, Windows Mobile), and the Symbian Series 40, 60, UIQ, versions 8 & 9, yada, yada.

With a common operating system come common data management utulities. That leads to the ability to share knowledge on how the systems work, and what follows is how to hack in to recover data, either data lost be accident or concealed/destroyed with intent. (Click here for the rest of the story.)

__________________
John Bartley K7AAY | http://celdata.cjb.net | http://kiloseven.blogspot.com

Latest 5 articles

Is Palm Over Playing Their Palm Pre?

Sprint Reported to Have Palm Pre All To Itself for 2009

The First Victim of Apple's iPhone...

A PDAPhone for Under $100?

First Look: Treo 755P Review Published

#1 (permalink)

By johnbartley on 07-08-2005, 02:44 PM

NIST created a report last year on recovering data from PalmOS, Linux and Windows CE and appropriate forensics tools for the task.

One of my issues then with that report, which NIST back-burnered at the time, were smartphones with other OS. Fortunately, the private sector has stepped up, and Paraben has offered their second-generation product to do just that.

Now, if you lost data, or are looking to recover data, on a removable memory card, you don't need their recovery tools; there are many programs (see reviews) under $50, and even some freeware (see here for another), to recover data from removable memory cards, such as the SD/MMC cards found commonly in PDAphones. One manufacturer even includes recovery software and recovery phone support with their premium line of SD cards.

I, for one, IMHO, would feel like an idiot if I didn't buy the best card available... after all, if I err and erase files, or a card gets accidentally mangled, I surely want manufacturer's help in recovering them.