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Widespread adoption of NVRAM may require a significant change in security models, since data once assumed ephemeral may be persistent. For example, it may be tr
by sweis 14y ago
Widespread adoption of NVRAM may require a significant change in security models, since data once assumed ephemeral may be persistent. For example, it may be trivial to recover cryptographic keys from a running system.
(Disclaimer: I'm working on a solution to this.)
- kijin 14y agoThis. I'm surprised nobody else mentioned security. Instead of chilling DRAM sticks immediately after shutdown and trying to read its contents with specialized tools, people could just take the NVRAM out and analyze it at leisure. I don't think it will be too difficult for security software to wipe their keys from memory before shutting down, and many programs already do this. But so much more would remain vulnerable unless the decrypted data structures were also wiped from memory. Implementing effective security with NVRAM-equipped computers might therefore negate much of the benefit of using NVRAM in the first place.
- aidenn0 14y agoThere are already solutions out there for the paranoid who are afraid of cryogenic attacks on DRAM
- sweis 14y agoYes and no. There are some solutions out there, but they are typically not ready for production, require custom hardware, or make assumptions about physical security controls. (Disclaimer: I am biased since I am working on this.)
- gouranga 14y agoThat's fairly easy to deal with - TPM module in PCs does this already.
- sweis 14y agoThe TPM does not provide full memory protection. TPMs are primarily used to attest the state of running software. It does not prevent someone from reading memory contents.