Post #2075667

2026-05-04 20:08 UTC

@oddtail @aoanla Unlike the bootloader code, manufacturers will NEVER give this key away. People have managed to hack some of them, but in general they are unavailable. So there goes that option. But again you might say, in a computer, I can pop the drive off and connect it to another computer. Can't I pop off the phone's drive and connect it to another phone? Nope. The drive is a chip soldered to the motherboard. You need very specialized and expensive tools to be able to unsolder it. And even if you do, the interface of each drive is a bit different. Computer drives all have a standard set of pins in a standard order with standard functions, so all computer drives are compatible with each other. This is not the case in phone drives, as eachanufacturer does whatever they want. And of course, what each pin does is a trade secret, so you don't have access to it. 4/?

Replies (1)

@flafflar@tech.lgbt 2026-05-04 20:14

@oddtail @aoanla But let's even say you manage to somehow guess what each pin does and manage to connect your phone's drive to another device. Surely you must have access to it now, right? Well, kinda. Yes, you can unlock the bootloader now, but you're still restricted because your data inside the drive is encrypted. Well, can't I just decrypt it? I just need the password. Surely, it must be my phone's PIN/password, right? Nope. For extra safety, they use a special key that's burned inside your processor. Since the key is literally burned inside the silicon of the chip, NOONE has access to it except your processor - not you, not even the manufacturer. So the only way to unlock your data is to run an unlocking software on your processor. This might not sound bad, but remember we're talking about damaged phones. If the processor is damaged, what do you do? You can't just replace the processor because the new processor will have a different key. 5/?

Open ##2075668