pucitp
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2011–2020
5:22 · 749K views · Feb 21, 2008
A short Princeton CITP video describing cold boot attacks, where encryption keys remain in DRAM after power loss and can be recovered. It covers the attack against disk encryption such as BitLocker, FileVault and TrueCrypt.
It is linked as the original short demonstration that keys can be pulled from RAM after shutdown.
4 comments from Hacker News
Indeed, the encryption keys can be recovered from memory fairly easily. [LINK] is very readable; this video is a well-made 5-minute introduction by the authors.
For getting encryption keys from RAM after shutdown there's this video mentioned by another commentor: this video For using reflections, there's this paper implementing reading screen content from various things like reading glasses, a can of coke or even the user's eye (including a discussion of limitations): [LINK] Right now I can't find something on reading keyboard vibrations with lasers, but here's one doing it acoustically and one doing it via acclerometer of a phone on the table: [LINK] [LINK]
2. "with the cryogenic RAM freezing technique, presumably" - errr, no. With the "sit down at the computer and turn off the encryption/copy the data to an external drive technique", I think you'll find. Obvious bullsh*t to anyone technical but sounds 'cool' to your average 14yr old who reads these sort of sites. Errr, actually yes. You may be interested in [1] and [2]. [1] [LINK] [2] this video
You're right, I think an attack could be possible on some computers if the agents act very quickly. I don't think 30 minutes would be possible though, judging from what is said and shown in the original cold boot video: this video