Extracting data physically with dd
The dd
command should be familiar to any examiner who has done traditional hard drive forensics. The dd
command is a Linux command-line utility used by definition to convert and copy files, but is frequently used in forensics to create bit-by-bit images of entire drives. Many variations of the dd
commands also exist and are commonly used, such as dcfldd
, dc3dd
, ddrescue
, and dd_rescue
. As the dd
command is built for Linux-based systems, it is frequently included on Android platforms. This means that a method for creating an image of the device often already exists on the device!
The dd
command has many options that can be set, of which only forensically important options are listed here. The format of the dd
command is as follows:
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/blk0.img bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror,sync
if
: This option specifies the path of the input file to read from.of
: This option specifies the path of the output file to write to.bs
: This option...