Dropped my iPhone 6s. Hardware is broken. Need to delete personal data from phone.

No actually, Secure Enclave is not intended to just deal with securing the storage chips, in isolation, themselves. You can take the SSD storage out of a Secure Enclave device and it won’t help one wit. You need the actual Secure Enclave hardware on the logic board, and other linked original hardware, to decrypt the device. Secure Enclave is explicitly designed to stop anyone from gaining access to the device without the bulk of the original device hardware intact and working.

And apple or another recycling center isn't going to somehow magically gain access to the OPs password anyway. They’re going to dump it in the bin in the way to the recycling center and it’s going to be rendered to nothing but raw material. We’re not talking about leaving it on the street. We’re talking about dropping it off at a commercial recycler who makes their money off the materials reclaimed, and about extracting them as efficiently and rapidly as possibly.

https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

The FBI paid For the password on a non-Secure Enclave iPhone 5 because in the absence of the Secure Enclave hardware and firmware, that screen locked password could be cracked (using an exploit the Israeli security firm has admitted has since been patched even in older iOS releases). With Secure Enclave, having the password is not enough. You also need most of the original device hardware intact and working normally. Secure Enclave relies upon an non-publicly documented lookup database of original hardware IDs amongst other things. That is why users and third parties cannot replace touchID home buttons and have touchID work - only Apple can do that.

Dismantling a damaged iPhone or iPad is not recommended for a novice. The lithium battery alone contains very toxic materials - forget about fire or explosions (not likely actually). Metallic lithium is highly toxic.

Disassemble until you get the logic board.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xlcSQVvhDA

Caution: don't mess with the battery.

I'd take a hammer and chisel to the SSD. It will make you feel better about protecting your data.

R

PS. This is what I hear the secret squirrels do.

Just keep the iPhone if you think there is too many private info, do not hammer your logic board, because i'm scared that you hammered into the battery and explode, also hammering the ssd is also useless when your fingerprint data is stored in the CPU, so my best choice is to keep it, or just disassemble the iPhone and take out the board and keep the board and then you can recycle the other parts like the camera, and other else.

No, your data cannot be access if it falls into anyone’s hands. The FBI spent a million dollars to get into the data on an older iphone that did not have Secure Enclave encryption. There has been not one single credible report of anyone cracking into a Secure Enclave equipped device, which is every iPhone since the iPhone 5s and the A7 processor.

Since your device is unusable just drop it off at Apple or another recycler - it will be going right into recycle since it is so damaged, and the recycling process is largely robotic and automated. There is no reason to go to any extremes - your data is already securely locked away from anybody’s prying eyes.

What if the original poster never put a password on the device or someone somehow got the password? It would seem the someone who found the device could repair it then get the data off of the device. Yes, the ssd is always encrypted, but this is to stop a pysical attack from someone who somehow gets ahold of the ssd chip without the rest of the parts.

The FBI paid the money because they didn't know the password.

You can probably get the data off if you need it by calling drivesavers.com.

R

It sort of sounds like you have nothing to worry about. If the handset itself is dead, then extracting the personal info is not possible without extreme measures.

Unless you are a spy or cutting edge nuclear scientist, I wouldn't worry. Ultimately you could actually remove the battery and completely destroy the remains using perhaps a hammer. This would "make sure".

DON'T use the hammer approach with the battery in place. There is an explosion and fire hazard in that case.

This doesn't answer by concern. We don't know if there is a password on the device. So someone could fix the device and gain access to the data. How to fix the device is all over the web.

People said the same thing about the impossibility of hacking an iPhone until someone was able to recover the data.

R

If there is no screen lock passcode, there is no “hacking” of the device involved at all. They just access and use it. It’s just like leaving the doors to your house unlocked. There is no break in, the thief just walks in and helps themselves.

If any smart phone user, of any manufacturer, make or model, refuses to use a device passcode, then anyone with physical access to that device, in working condition, has full and unfettered access to it and its content. There is no “hacking” involved at all with an unsecured device.

With an iPhone 5s and above, with a screen lock passcode in effect, the ability to recover data from storage on a non-functional device is highly unlikely. All the hype on the internet about repairing and recovering data from damaged devices is not borne out by reliable, and verified reports in tech media news.

TTA_TTA_ wrote:

I did put a password on my phone.

If I keep the SSD chip, can I connect it to my computer and recover/erase the data on the chip?

Can 'drivesavers' permanently delete the data on my phone? Is it an authorized and safe service?

No. It's useless without the secure enclave chips on the logic board of the phone.

Carsonl2509 wrote:

It is always on your CPU, doesn't matter that you are trying to unlock it or not.

Absolutely, completely WRONG. Your fingerprint isn't stored anywhere in a way that it can be recovered; it is a mathematical representation of your fingerprint that cannot be used to reconstruct your fingerprint (think public key encryption or SSL, which is the same idea). In addition it is not stored in the CPU. It is stored in the encrypted Secure Enclave which can only be unlocked with the phone's passcode.

If you had a passcode set on the phone, don't worry about it. the data is encrypted and is unrecoverable.