I Saw The Device Mumbai Police Uses To Hack Into A Criminal's Smartphone To Find Hidden Data

With criminals getting smarter with the use of latest technology at their disposal, our law enforcement agencies need to stay one step ahead to catch them red-handed and put them behind bars without wasting time.

Which means finding out the deepest, darkest secrets of a criminal's activity, often hidden deep inside a device we all use everyday.

Representative Image: Reuters

Just think about it: our smartphones are our biggest source of secrets, in today's age. From the people we talk to, the things we like or share on social media, and the secrets we keep hidden deep inside, our phone keeps a track of everything we do. This is also applicable in the case of criminals.

So when cops find someone who is accused of some criminal activity, their phone can be the strongest source of incriminating evidence. And the cyber-cell of the Mumbai Police has one amazing weapon in its arsenal that can breach into any phone and extract its underlying secrets. And we got to witness how it worked!

The weapon that cracks open any phone

The weapon is called UFED -- a hardware and software solution that as a combined kit can completely breach into any smartphone and retrieve all the required data from the time the phone was turned on for the very first time.

The technology is developed in Israel by Cellebrite, and it is one of the most popular smartphone investigation tool provider with a wide support of smartphones across the globe. Cellebrite's software has the keys to crack open almost all kinds of phones.

Cellebrite

Cables from all kinds of phones ever existed!

The kit comprises of a complete set of phone cables, clone sim cards, card readers and other necessary tech. Name the phone and the kit possesses the cable to connect the phone with. Not just the standard micro USB, USB Type-C or Lightning connectors that we see today.

Cellebrite

When browsing through the kit myself, my 'nerdvana' levels skyrocketed! I found that the kit possessed cables for even the 20-year old Ericsson T20 flip phones! (I still own this phone, and it still works, in case you were wondering)

The kit also included cables for various Chinese feature phones that flooded the Indian market during the late 2000's- Early 2010's. I even saw the classic Nokia data Pop-port -- The one seen on N-Gage, Nokia 7610, Nokia 6233 etc.

Cellebrite

These cables, however, are no ordinary cables. The cables are equipped with a chip at the end which allows for it to crack open the software security gates and gain access to the data on the phone.

The cable works in tandem with the software, that can be installed on any ordinary laptop. When the phone is connected to the PC with the software in it, the software activates the chip in the cable and commences the breach process.

What if the phone is locked?

Most of the phones today are locked, either using fingerprints, or a pin or facial recognition. However, for Cellebrite, this isn't a big deal as the hardware and the software do a sorcery of its own and crack open the phone in a couple of hours.

Cellebrite

Cellebrite UFED can crack open 65-70 percent of phones that exist in the market today -- as claimed by Pelorus, the brand responsible for getting Cellebrite to India and in to the hands of the Mumbai Police.

UFED is capable of cracking into all kinds of feature phones, smartphones running on Android as well as iOS! Yes, Cellebrite can crack open iPhones as well!

What kind of data can be retrieved?

After breaching into a phone, UFED can look into contacts, caller information, messaging information, GPS location of the phone, location of the images you've captured -- which can give useful clues to the Mumbai Police, while tracking a suspect's criminal activity.

Anything and everything on your phone can be retrieved and brought back to life as evidence, using the UFED.

Cellebrite

This includes not just deleted files but even files that were lost after a factory data reset. Files once registered on a phone, stay on the phone forever and never go away, no matter how many hard resets or flashes you do to erase them.

What if the phone is totally damaged?

The UFED kit has a bunch of gadgets to connect with the phone, even when the phone is damaged. After connecting the special cable to the PC, the software completely takes care of the rest.

Even if the phone doesn't have a battery, the kit comes with crocodile clamps that have a USB port on the other end that can power the device temporarily to retrieve necessary data.

However, if the phone's motherboard or IC is completely destroyed or damaged, the data on the phone becomes completely inaccessible.

What after collecting data?

After collecting the data, UFED will give out a comprehensive report in a digital format that can be accessed by investigating officers that can scan it for necessary evidence. The software is smart enough to help Mumbai Police officers search with contextual awareness and some help from AI.

For example, if the officer is looking specifically for a red car in the images, instead of manually searching for the car, they can simply search for a red car in the search directory and the software will smartly sort the images accordingly.

After retrieving necessary evidence, an officer will make a report according to the legal process and submit it in the court of law, that the judge will observe and deliver his judgement on the specific case.

The race to stay up to date

With every new phone launching one after another, Cellebrite works on cracking down each one of these phones. Moreover, it also works on software updates that are received by these phones, if it hampers the process of breaching in any way.

Representative Image: Rawpixel

Cellebrite has an R&D facility in Singapore that specialises in phones that are specifically hard to crack, and they're also the ones that keep on updating their software to always stay ahead of the curve.

Forensic investigators are regularly trained by Cellebrite staff if any major overhaul is added to the software and hardware to make their investigation process prompt and instantaneous.

Can a common-man buy this technology?

Pelorus Technologies is the OEM for Cellebrite products in India and and they've been dealing with them since three years. Products like UFED is only sold to law enforcement agencies in our country and no layman or corporate enterprise is authorised to use this kind of technology.

Only after Cellebrite acknowledges the request to be from a valid and trustworthy source, it sells its services to them. Moreover, we didn't get to know the exact pricing but we just got to know that it doesn't come cheap for sure.