BBtv "Hacker HOWTO": Cold Boot Encryption Attack
Xeni visits the offices of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and speaks with Jake Appelbaum and Bill Paul, two of the authors of a security research paper that shows how your computer's memory can be tricked into revealing data you thought was safely encrypted, and out of the reach of others.
One method involves using a can of compressed air to quickly cool the memory chip, but freezing the target isn't the only way to lull it into submission -- Paul shows us how to use an iPod or a USB thumb drive to do the same thing. These methods have been shown to defeat three popular disk encryption products commonly used to protect data on laptops: BitLocker (Windows Vista), FileVault (MacOS X), and dm-crypt (Linux).
Here's the entire text of the report draft, released earlier this year: Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys . Authors: J. Alex Halderman, Seth D. Schoen, Nadia Heninger, William Clarkson, William Paul, Joseph A. Calandrino, Ariel J. Feldman, Jacob Appelbaum, and Edward W. Felten.
The team plan to research additional software tools and a final version of their report at Usenix Security Symposium in July/August.
Special thanks to Seth Schoen and Peter Eckersley of the EFF.
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msramdmp is the program in question being used on the iPod (or booting from any USB disk such as a flash drive). Thanks to Jake Appelbaum, Robert Wesley McGrew, et. al. for demonstrating how practicable this attack really is.
zuzu, I assure you that the iPod is not loaded with msramdmp. We wrote all of our own software for these attacks. msramdmp is very limited and bloated for what it can do. It stomps on a ton of memory because it uses SYSLINUX, it doesn't play nice with 64bit, etc, etc.
Everything we've written is from scratch because we care about having the most minimal memory footprint possible.
Dolphinporn.com got the best of me (or worst, as you like it) and I had to see if it was real. Warning, under no circumstances should you Google dolphinporn.com, or any wholly owned subsidiary. I warned you.
Do you plan on publicly releasing the software with the final report at the Usenix Security Symposium?
We'll release most of the software in the near-ish future.
http://www.dolphinporn.com seems safe and happy, WTH?
@seanboing, oh, not if you speak dolphin it's not. The wav files of underwater squeaks on that page are downright filthy. There should at least be some age verification link or something! Christ!
Ahh Xeni, you crack me up!