Editor’s note: Physical extraction from Qualcomm based smartphone devices has always been a unique feature of our mobile forensic products. On this Jan, we posted an article about the Qualcomm physical extraction solution integrated into our SPF product. And now with the new release of SPF Pro, we would like to bring up this Qualcomm utility again and introduce to you what kinds of improvements have been made.
What is Qualcomm physical extraction?
Qualcomm is an American multinational semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company. Qualcomm’ products are used by many cell phone manufacturers, especially for Android devices.
If you are a digital forensic investigator, you must have a headache for dealing with all kinds of locked or screen-damaged smartphones every day. And our Qualcomm physical extraction utility provides you the easy solution to this kind of problem.
Forensic experts from SalvationDATA developed a way to physically extract the user’s data via a reserved developer port of Qualcomm chipsets. For smartphones equipped with Qualcomm chipsets, you don’t have to remove the memory chip from the PCB, the extraction can be done with a simple connection of the USB port, and it is even able to help you to bypass the OS password protection.
This physical extraction solution supports the most popular Chinese smartphone brands in the world such as Xiaomi(MI), OPPO, VIVO, ZTE, Letv, and OnePlus, etc. You can download our SPF Pro software from our resources page of the website and have a trial for free.
Ok, now let see how to use our SPF Pro to do a Qualcomm physical extraction.
Step 1.
Create a new case or load a history case to enter a device selection page. Select your target smartphone from the device list.
Optional
Sometimes your target smartphone cannot boot to OS, or you simply don’t have the password, so it’s not showing in SPF’s device list. In this case, we can also manually find the Qualcomm physical extraction utility in the toolbox.
Step 2.
Choose ‘9008 Imaging’ from the solution list.
Step 3.
Find your smartphone model from the support list, and enable Qualcomm 9008 port mode by using one of the three options below.
Option 1. ADB Command.
Single click on option 1 and SPF will automatically send an ADB command to the smartphone and enable 9008 port. This option only works when the smartphone can boot up and is connected to your PC with USB debugging.
Option 2. Manual Operation.
Press and hold both volume + & – when powering of the smartphone for a few seconds to manually enable 9008 port mode.
Option 3. Engineering Cable.
Connect the target smartphone to the PC with an engineering cable. Use the button on the cable to enable 9008 port.
Step 4.
After 9008 port is successfully enabled, click ‘Detection’ to verify. Select the correct port number from the COM port list and specify a destination path to save the image file, then click ‘Extract’ to begin the physical extraction process.
Step 5.
Wait for the imaging process to complete, then click ‘Analyze’ to automatically load the image file for data triage.
Optional
We can also go back to the device selection page, and manually load the image file by clicking ‘File Analysis’
Step 6.
Choose the target apps for data triage, after the process is complete we can view what data has been extracted. We can also generate a forensic report by clicking the ‘Report’ button on the upper right corner of the interface.
Conclusion
By using SalvationDATA’s Qualcomm physical extraction technology, we would be able to physically extract the data from the smartphone eMMC even without chip-off operation. And the smartphone image data would be a bit-by-bit copy of the eMMC, ensuring 100% integrity of the data you extract. Physical extraction is also the foundation of any inaccessible file recovery from the smartphone memory, like recovering lost/deleted pictures or videos.
Check out our website for more information if you are interested in our forensic solutions. And we welcome you to enjoy your free trial of our forensic products!
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