Re: [Bug-ddrescue] Is it possible to ddrescue an iPhone?

[Iphone Recovery Online Info]

Dear Paul,

> Sorry, I know this isn't a bug as such, but I have a situation where I
> really could do well to get a ddrescue image of an iPhone (4 or 5).
>
> My system shows up the filesystem via pcmanfm as an afc:// type (Apple
> file... something? ), but I can't see an actual mounted device anywhere
> so I don't even know where I could even begin to pull a ddrescue
> attempt from?
It is possible to pull an image from an iPhone using dd.
This requires the iPhone to be jailbroken, and ssh installed on it, so 
that you can log in. Is also requires netcat and dd installed on the 
phone (both available in Cydia).
You also need a PC with netcat on it, and the phone and the PC connected 
to the same network, so they can ping each other.

Once you have all that, you can start pulling the image from the phone.
On the PC, you start a listening netcat, and write the received data to 
a file:
nc -l -p 10000 > disk0.img

On the phone, you log in via ssh (root / alpine, or root / dottie), and 
start reading the flash disk with dd, and stream it to the PC using netcat:
dd if=/dev/disk0 bs=1M | nc x.x.x.x 10000
where x.x.x.x is the IP address of the PC.

You can have the image in a few hours (as the phone is on wifi). Make 
sure the phone is on charger and the auto lock-screen is off during the 
process.
The catch is that starting from iPhone 4, the filesystem is encrypted. 
That is, the image you will get looks like a valid image with HFS+ 
partitions on it, but the file's contents will be all garbage unless you 
decrypt them first - here is when things get complicated. You can read 
on about the encryption at 
http://esec-lab.sogeti.com/dotclear/public/publications/11-hitbamsterdam-iphonedataprotection.pdf

In fact, I have created a small command line tool to ease the imaging 
process, you can download it from here:
http://www.iphonerecoveryonline.com/software/iPhoneImager_Setup_0.1.exe
Can be used on any phone, but it does not perform image decryption yet...
Your comments are welcome!

Answering your original question, I did not see ddrescue on iPhone, I 
think nobody ever compiled it for this platform, but I think dd should 
be fine as a start.
I don't know what is your reason for imaging this phone? Please tell me 
more and maybe I can help.

Best regards,
Peter