Research has found freezing Android phones can result in the bypassing of encryption systems meant to protect content.
A team at the Frederich Alexander Universitat in Germany found by chilling an Android phone to below 10 degrees celsius (C) the security encryption system can be circumvented, allowing unencrypted content to be accessed and saved onto another device.
The research aims to help law enforcement and forensic investigators access content – such as sent messages, web browsing history and photographs – on phones running the Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, which features the disk encryption system which scrambles data and protects it from attacks.
“…scrambled telephones are a nightmare for IT forensics and law enforcement, because once the power of a scrambled device is cut any chance other than brute force is lost to recover data,” explains the research team presenting their new data recovery system, Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones (FROST).
In order to bypass the encryption, the phone must be placed in a freezer for approximately one hour until the device measures below ten C. The battery should then be wiggled back and forth without removing it entirely from the case.
The power button, as well as the volume up and down buttons, must then be held down, whereafter the phone can be booted using the FROST software, which in turn allows unscrambled data to be recovered from the device.
