What are the two enemies to electronic evidence?

• A. Physical and External damage
• B. Internal and Chemical damage
• C. Environmental and Thermal damage
• D. Mechanical and Magnetic damage

Answer: (A)

Electronic evidence is sensitive to two broad kinds of harm that can destroy or corrupt it: physical damage to the device and external environmental damage to the storage media.

Physical damage includes any direct harm to the hardware—drops, crushes, tampering, or physical failures of components—that can make data unreadable or cause loss. External environmental damage covers conditions outside the device that still affect data integrity—water exposure, extreme heat or humidity, dust, power surges, or other environmental factors that degrade or destroy the storage medium or interfere with imaging and acquisition.

The other pairings don’t capture these two overarching threat categories as clearly: they tend to focus on more specific or internal factors (internal damage, chemical damage, magnetic damage) or on a single environmental factor (thermal) rather than the general, two-pronged distinction between direct physical harm and broad external/environmental exposure.