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In general, these kinds of attacks are cross-process information leaks and sandbox escapes. The attack vector is untrusted code running on your system, of which

In general, these kinds of attacks are cross-process information leaks and sandbox escapes. The attack vector is untrusted code running on your system, of which the by far most common and most potentially malicious is javascript when you use a web browser. So the worst case scenario? You visit a website with some attacker-controlled javascript, and it successfully picks up information leaks from your password manager allowing it to obtain all your passwords. I'm not sure how realistic that attack is. I know that for some of these vulnerabilities attacks from javascript were shown to be possible, but I'm not sure what the target information was in that case.

specialist 7y ago
Are there ways to prevent data from being in the cache? I know almost nothing about computer security. I ask because ages ago, I added copyright protection to some products (under protest). Though encrypted on disk, once loaded, all our code and key phrases were "plaintext" in memory, easy to read. Hackers would post cracked versions of our releases within 24 hours. The whole effort seemed pointless. My takeaway was if you had physical access, you have everything. But maybe things have improved.
- ekimekim 7y ago
  If you have physical access, you have everything (given sufficient time and effort). This will always be true, though dedicated security hardware (TPMs, etc) might drive up that time and effort requirement to get at their contents. The access provided by these attacks is a far cry from physical access. There are plenty of things that can be done to mitigate them (removing data from the cache, for example). Of course, this entire post is about how to disable those mitigations, as they almost always come with a performance penalty.
- Shikadi 7y ago
  In memory data like that is always accessible by someone who wants it bad enough (with a physical device and a clean install), one can run Windows in a debugger like environment and view all of system memory. I think that's why most DRM is web authentication based

specialist 7y ago

Are there ways to prevent data from being in the cache? I know almost nothing about computer security. I ask because ages ago, I added copyright protection to some products (under protest). Though encrypted on disk, once loaded, all our code and key phrases were "plaintext" in memory, easy to read. Hackers would post cracked versions of our releases within 24 hours. The whole effort seemed pointless. My takeaway was if you had physical access, you have everything. But maybe things have improved.

ekimekim 7y ago
If you have physical access, you have everything (given sufficient time and effort). This will always be true, though dedicated security hardware (TPMs, etc) might drive up that time and effort requirement to get at their contents. The access provided by these attacks is a far cry from physical access. There are plenty of things that can be done to mitigate them (removing data from the cache, for example). Of course, this entire post is about how to disable those mitigations, as they almost always come with a performance penalty.
Shikadi 7y ago
In memory data like that is always accessible by someone who wants it bad enough (with a physical device and a clean install), one can run Windows in a debugger like environment and view all of system memory. I think that's why most DRM is web authentication based