At the beginning of this year, a huge scandal broke out between Apple and the FBI because Tim Cook refused to help the federal agency obtain access to the data of an iPhone 5C. Whole weeks of disputes and accusations ended with the victory of those from Apple, the FBI spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to gain access to the data from that smartphone.
In the middle of those events, someone suggested that a clone of the NAND chip, in which iPhone data is stored, would be a simple way to gain access to the information. The FBI ignored the solution, but a teacher demonstrated that using only $100 components he managed to gain access to the data of an iPhone 5C.
Without having a previously developed method, Professor Sergei Skorobogatov of the University of Cambridge needed 4 months to break the Apple terminal. The period is a very long one because he worked alone on the entire project, but in the end he managed to do everything himself with only 100 dollars instead of several hundred thousand.
In order for the procedure to be successful, the teacher removed the NAND chip from the iPhone 5C and used a special software to crack its security code, replacing several chips until he found the correct one. The method is not a simple one, it is long-lasting, but also much cheaper than the one used by the FBI.
