If you remember and I'm sure that you do, a while back some researchers at Princeton released a demonstration video of shaping encryption keys from frozen memory.  They proved that RAM may not be quite as volatile as everyone had previously assumed.  The tool they used is now public information.  Great, great...so the hell what.

Another researcher had proved that through the use of a device with direct memory access (DMA) one could execute arbitrary commands by manipulating memory.

Access to memory + Crypto key shaping tool = pwned hard disk encryption without the need for a can of air and the ability to disassemble the computer (also sweet for 0wning the MacBook Air's smug little soldered on RAM).

Now, such a tool does not yet exist (to my knowledge).  Fertile ground.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Hardware, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.