I have an old Samsung P400 - the only cable that can connect it is one of the old Samsung plugs at one end that you plug into the bottom of the phone - and at the other end of the cable is an RS232 Serial port plug.
The phone powers on and has no password so no problem there - but I need an acquisition to search for deleted messages.
Unfortunately whenever I connect it to the Serial port on my computer I get no reaction and it doesn't show up in any of the forensics programs.
I've found something online that is a USB to Serial adapter so basically it'll allow me to plug the thing directly into a USB port - will this do the trick?
Is there any actual difference in the data carried between a serial port and a USB port or do they carry exactly the same data? For example, I know a VGA port can only carry image but no sound, is there any similar non adaptability between serial and USB ports?
If your computer has a "real" serial port, i.e. a "COM" port then you need NOT a USB to serial (technically a USB to RS232) converter.
What the latter will do will be to create a "Virtual Com port" 100% identical to the onboard serial port.
The issue may be with the protocol used.
Whilst USB is a "fixed" protocol, RS232 is a "flexible" one, there are parameters that you have to set (and set properly) in order to communicate with a device (and of course there is no "plug'n play").
Baud rate, Data bits, Parity, Stop bits and flow control must match.
Usually on old devices like that, common was 9600/8/N/1/N, but cannot say specifically.
But you will most probably need some specific software, you can try connecting to the device through Terminal but it has to be seen if there is a "plain" access to the device, I don't think that there is a built-in provision for that.
More properly, is it a SGH-P400 like this?
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Cable should be S200 or PCB093LBE
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jaclaz
If you have access to XRY the Samsung SGH-P400 is supported for both Logical and Physical extraction using the Samsung Cable #2 + RJ45 #2
jaclaz -
Yes that's exactly the phone and cable I have.
I suspect you are correct that it is the software-connection issue as you said RS232 is not plug and play.
In your last link you posted the software designed for the phone, thanks for that. Unfortunately it looks like it doesn't work on anything newer than Win XP.
Is there any way to get that software to work on Win 10? Or is my only option to create a VM running XP? If so then I have the added problem of the RS232 port to the VM…
jaclaz -
Yes that's exactly the phone and cable I have.
I suspect you are correct that it is the software-connection issue as you said RS232 is not plug and play.
In your last link you posted the software designed for the phone, thanks for that. Unfortunately it looks like it doesn't work on anything newer than Win XP.
Is there any way to get that software to work on Win 10? Or is my only option to create a VM running XP? If so then I have the added problem of the RS232 port to the VM…
You mean you are using Windows 10 for work? 😯
Really you should have an old rig running XP[1], a lot of tools - of course old ones but also some "minor" or "edge" ones - will only work on XP or earlier.
Besides being a bettered Windows 2000 (only adding some bells and whistes and making it slightly worse) XP had a great adoption initially and remained the same (or almost the same) for 15 years or so, unlike Vista (what) and even 7 that wasn't really-really adopted vastly at the beginning, it is only natural that most software will work fine on XP (please read as NT 5.x) and have issues on NT 6+, the good MS guys in the name of security (which was not apparently anyway increased) posed a whole lot of limitations in the functionality, especially in the "lowest level" ones.
And for some (good BTW) tools even NT isn't good enough and you need to have a "real" DOS.
jaclaz
[1] or a dual or triple boot machine, VM's are not usually good enough with any tool that needs "low level" kind of communication, you would anyway have to pass through the HAL of the host.