Not having encryption of the stored data isn't that far from not having a passcode at all. What would data security look like if it really were as simple as just reading those details directly off the NAND in plain text? What would it take to simply grab your phone, unscrew the logic board, pop off your NAND chip and read it? It would take about 15 minutes and total equipment costs that come in under the price of a nice vacation. Our photos, calendar, bank information and browser history are all written to the NAND flash memory. They contain all of the important details of our lives. Our phones have become our miniature handheld brains.
Your data is stored on the NAND as gibberish-it's encrypted. It isn't a huge deal to desolder the NAND chip and there are many inexpensive NAND readers out there that you can plug the chip into and read it. The NAND acts like the hard drive of the phone and contains all of the user data. We all know that there must be some sort of memory chip on the iPhone, and indeed there is! The flash memory storage chip, or NAND chip, is about the size of your thumbnail. If only it were that easy! The sad answer to "Can we just read the data from the memory chip?" Is Yes, but.it's gibberish. Many of our incoming requests ask us to fix their phone if we can, but if not possible then *JUST* get the data.
What does it take to recover iPhone data?Ĭan you just read the data from the memory chip?