Damaged mobile phones are still filled with plenty of useful data, according to researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST published the results of a recent study on forensic methods for getting data from mobile damaged mobile phones. It tested the tools that law enforcement uses to hack phones and found that even if criminals attempt to destroy the evidence by burning, drowning, or smashing their phones, forensic tools can still successfully extract data from the phone's electronic components.
"If the phone has some structural damage or thermal damage, or liquid damage, you're still able to sometimes bypass that," says Rick Ayers, the NIST digital forensics expert who led the study. He told ZDNet that modern forensic techniques are effective, although that hasn't always been the case.
The Evolution of Mobile Forensics
Ayers has been working on mobile forensics for the United States government for the last 17 years. During that time, he witnessed the evolution of mobile phones and the forensic tools that are used to investigate them. He started back in 2003 with PDAs (personal digital assistants) such as palm pilots and the Windows mobile PDA, then basic feature phones, and the first iPhones.
While early mobile devices were groundbreaking at the time, they had limited capabilities and therefore didn't carry much useful evidence for law enforcement. They had phone logs, some texts, and perhaps a few photos. Plus, there weren't many reliable forensic tools for extracting data. The tools that did exist weren't standardized, so they could only be used on certain makes and models, such