I’ve taken some flack lately about my articles relating to Windows Mobile’s .MENC files.
Apparently, some people (you know who you are) don’t particularly like what I have to say, so let’s do a little recap.
.MENC is a file-extension that denotes “mobile encryption” by Windows Mobile devices (not Windows Phone 7). Windows Mobile gives you (or whoever is responsible for administrating the device) the ability to remotely wipe the phone. The problem with this was the sdcard, which was untouched. So any proprietary information stored on the sdcard would still be accessible, even after a remote wipe of the phone.
Another scenario is if you have a password set up to access your device. If you misplace your phone, it would take a significant amount of time and effort to break into the phone. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to open the phone, take out the sdcard, and read its contents using another computer.
To address both of these problems, Microsoft let users (or administrators) encrypt the contents of the sdcard on a file-by-file basis. It was completely transparent to the user, and let the device access the files easily and quickly, but when the sdcard was removed, the files weren’t accessible because they’re encrypted. Pop the card back into the phone that created them, and they were accessible again.
My instructions for being able to recover the date within the .MENC files was simple: turn off sdcard encryption, then copy/move the encrypted files to another location on the card, and the encryption would be removed from the files.
The requires that you have access to the device on which the .MENC files were created, are able to access it (unlock it with a password, if present), and that it hasn’t been reset (because if it has, the encryption keys are regenerated, and the files made with the old keys are inaccessible).
That’s what some people haven’t liked. To them I say, tough beans. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do. If you want to try breaking into the files via a brute-force attack, feel free. But just as I wouldn’t tell you how to break into and hotwire a car, I’m not going to tell you how to break into a .MENC file. (I don’t know how to do either.)
S0, lesson learned, move on. If the files were that important you’d have backed them up somewhere else, right? Exactly.
Microsoft has you covered with Windows Phone 7 though… you can’t even remove the sdcard without voiding your warranty. So there.
