5 posts tagged Cold Boot Attacks

Take a seven dollar can of compressed air from any office supply store. Flip it over, and spray its liquid nitrogen on a computer’s DRAM, or digital random access memory. Reboot the computer, or even extract the DRAM chip and clone it, then run a few relatively simple programs.

Take a seven dollar can of compressed air from any office supply store. Flip it over, and spray its liquid nitrogen on a computer’s DRAM, or digital random access memory. Reboot the computer, or even extract the DRAM chip and clone it, then run a few relatively simple programs.

You've no doubt seen the latest handywork of Ed Felten and his team from the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy regarding cold boot attacks on encryption keys: Abstract: Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard.

Method to steal encrypted information developed February 22, 2008 A group led by a Princeton University computer security researcher has developed a simple method to steal encrypted information stored on computer hard disks. Read the rest of this entry » Business

Interesting reading. From Princeton.edu: Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard.