Physical Extraction (MTK Hack)
There is a way of extracting physical image from phones with MediaTek chipsets without root access (rooting the phone).
This exploit method does not work on all MTK-equipped devices, but sometimes it is the only way of acquiring the physical image because the phone does not have to be booted up or unlocked in order to perform this operation; which means you can try even if the phone is off or locked.
Here is a guide through the process of using the MTK hack on the screenshots below:
- On the main screen click on "Hack phone"
- Choose "Get physical dump from MTK phone"
- Click "Next" and follow the on-screen guide
- You will be then asked to select a location on your disk, where the physical image will be stored. Please note that the physical image is as big as the full phone´s storage.
- Then you will be asked to connect the switched-off MTK phone.
- After the phone has been connected to a screen similar to the one below should appear; if not, the MTK hack is probably not available on your device.
- This should only take a few seconds and in some cases 1-2 minutes; the extraction will start right after.
- You can see the physical image being extracted on this screen. This may take a while depending on the amount of data stored in your device.
- After the extraction has finished, you will be able to find the IMG file at the destination location you have chosen.
This will not work for most MTK devices with locked bootloaders. In order to use MTK hack on such devices, bootloader has to be unlocked first.
Related Articles
Physical extraction
MOBILedit Forensic Express can perform physical extraction to create a bit-by-bit image of the data in the phone. Please note: physical acquisition and analysis is available only in the unlimited phone license; the single-phone license does not ...Physical Extraction (EDL Hack)
There is a way of extracting physical images from phones with Qualcomm chipsets without root access (rooting the phone). This exploit method does not work on all Qualcomm-equipped devices. MOBILedit Forensic Express has implemented this feature and ...Physical Extraction (LG Hack)
The "LG Hack" feature works on all LG smartphones with the new version of LG LAF protocol (this is a service download mode similar to Samsung Odin download mode) One of the first devices to feature this version was the first LG G flagship. Every LG ...Rooting a device (Dirty cow)
If you have a device that has an Android version up to 7 then you can try to root your device with a Dirty cow exploit. This is a temporary root and will be gone once you will restart your device 1. Click on "Hack phone" and choose "Root using ...Data - data extraction log
Following tab displays information about ongoing extraction: if you select the Data Extraction Log option in the Specific selection, you will get a brief resume of the extraction tab in your report as well: