A Device to Grab Data From Cell Phones

what about writes "Apparently there is a quick, simple, and undetectable way to grab all of your cellphone data. CNet reports on the Cellular Seizure Investigation (CSI) Stick, developed for law enforcement but available to the public, which 'connects to the data/charging port and will seamlessly grab e-mails, instant messages, dialed numbers, phone books and anything else that is stored in memory. It will even retrieve deleted files that have not been overwritten. And there is no trace whatsoever that the information has been compromised, nor any risk of corruption. This may be especially troublesome for corporate employees and those that work for government agencies.' I use mobile knox, a secure storage application, for my important data, but I would be very upset if somebody grabbed my telephone list, SMS, or anything else from my locked phone."

Comments

This only works on SOME phones

[davidwr]

Phones without a data port are immune.

Phones whose firmware will not send a particular piece of data over the data port are immune as long as the firmware isn't updated. Updating the firmware leaves a trace.

This goes to show that in many cases, physical access is ultimate access.

I see a market for "secure" phones where the data part of the data/charging port is disabled unless you plug in a key or type in a code. Many companies will gladly pay for such a device.

Re:This only works on SOME phones

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a market for "secure" phones where the data part of the data/charging port is disabled unless you plug in a key or type in a code. Many companies will gladly pay for such a device.

You know what those "secure" phones are called? Blackberries. Go buy one today!

On a blackberry, you can have all content on the phone strongly encrypted with AES. If your company has a blackberry enterprise server, you can even make this mandatory and prevent the user from disabling content encryption.

If content encryption is on, then the blackberry won't send data via the data port or bluetooth until the password is entered. Enter the wrong password 10 times and the blackberry securely wipes itself.

Despite the proliferation of mobile phones & wireless email, no one comes close to the blackberry platform for features & security. Not iphone, not windows mobile, not nokia. Some very smart people at RIM have looked at wireless email from end-to-end. The blackberry platform has also been audited from end-to-end by many governments and tech experts. What RIM really needs is a good marketing campaign to establish themselves as a "cool" brand.

Re:How much? Where?

[GodBlessTexas]

Yeah, you can find it at csistick.com. Price is $299 for the hardware + Device Seizure Lite software to access the acquired data.

I have a couple of these at work, since my job is as a forensics investigator, and they're nifty, but they're very limited in what you can do with them since they only support Motorola and Samsung. There are better tools out there:
PDA Seizure, Cell Seizure, Pilot-Link (Open Source), BitPIM (Open Source), ForensicSIM, etc.