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This is cool. What are some plausible attacks via reading memory over firewire or chilling the memory to preserve its state at shutdown? Also, does anyone kno
by Estragon 14y ago
This is cool. What are some plausible attacks via reading memory over firewire or chilling the memory to preserve its state at shutdown?
Also, does anyone know what he does that the security of his laptop merits this level of care?
- mike-cardwell 14y agoThe main attack is reading the full disk encryption key from the RAM. If you manage that, then you can decrypt the full disk.
- Estragon 14y agoYeah, but how is someone going to get access to the laptop to do that?
- keeperofdakeys 14y agoThe idea behind some of these countermeasures are so if someone steals your laptop, they can't access the data. The article comes from the 'beyond paranoid' side, since cold boot attacks especially are require a lot of setup (of course, once you have a laptop, take it to a lab). The firewire attack is as easy as plugging in a cable though, but still requires someone with the no-how to find the password. For most people, just having an encrypted drive is enough, since their data probably isn't valuable enough for people to go out of their way to steal it. You are mostly trying to protect your data from ordinary thieves.
- Estragon 14y agoBut these attacks are on the memory... I suppose there is a risk of the machine being stolen while it's turned on?
- mike-cardwell 14y agoThe whole point of the "Evil Maid", "Cold Boot" and "Firewire" attacks that are described in the blog post, is that physical access to the machine is required in order to pull them off...
- mike-cardwell 14y agoThis is a very strange question. Presumably they'd get physical access to it using any of the methods anyone ever uses to get physical access to something...