Hardware·19,015 discussions

How susceptible is the NAND flash chip from physical damage

Tags: Security

It’s my understanding that an iPhone uses NAND flash storage to store encrypted user data.

My question is: how susceptible is the NAND flash chip to physical damage that renders the data unreadable and irretrievable?

Would a hammer **** to the back of the iPhone in the middle totally destroy the data on the NAND flash chip?

I’ve been told that the NAND circuitry is very intricate and tiny so even a hair crack at this level will be like the Grand Canyon.

Topic

As you suspect. No or unlikely.

In reply to How susceptible is the NAND flash chip from physical damage

The damage would have to hit that chip. But the chip is encased so you pretty much have to keep hammering till you have broken up the phone into very small pieces to be sure it’s dead.

A few other thoughts.
1. Read https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/apple-iphone-data-recovery-extreme-conditions/ especially the following.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/sZVXWzo.gif[/img]

Re: iphone

2. This may not destroy all copies of the data since it’s up in the Apple Cloud.

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