Lest We Remember: Cold-Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys.
Contrary to widespread assumption, dynamic RAM (DRAM), the main memory in most modern computers, retains its contents for several seconds after power is lost, even at room temperature and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAM becomes less reliable when it is not refreshed, it is not imme...
| Publicado en: | Communications of the ACM Vol. 52; no. 5; pp. 91 - 99 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Association for Computing Machinery
May2009
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=39363012&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 39363012 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00010782 ACM jtl: Communications of the ACM issn: 00010782 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2009 vid: 52 iid: 5 pid: 68 pub: Association for Computing Machinery artinfo: ui: 39363012 10.1145/1506409.1506429 ppf: 91 ppct: 8 formats: tig: atl: Lest We Remember: Cold-Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys. aug: au: Halderman, J. Alex Schoen, Seth D. Heninger, Nadia Clarkson, William Paul, William Calandrino, Joseph A. Feldman, Ariel J. Appelbaum, Jacob Felten, Edward W. affil: University of Michigan. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Princeton University. Wind River Systems. The Tor Project. su: Dynamic random access memory Computer security software Random access memory Computer programming Cryptography Laptop computer security measures sug: subj: Dynamic random access memory Computer security software Random access memory Computer programming Cryptography Laptop computer security measures ab: Contrary to widespread assumption, dynamic RAM (DRAM), the main memory in most modern computers, retains its contents for several seconds after power is lost, even at room temperature and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAM becomes less reliable when it is not refreshed, it is not immediately erased, and its contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images. We show that this phenomenon limits the ability of an operating system to protect cryptographic key material from an attacker with physical access to a machine. It poses a particular threat to laptop users who rely on disk encryption: we demonstrate that it could be used to compromise several popular disk encryption products without the need for any special devices or materials. We experimentally characterize the extent and predictability of memory retention and report that remanence times can be increased dramatically with simple cooling techniques. We offer new algorithms for finding cryptographic keys in memory images and for correcting errors caused by bit decay. Though we discuss several strategies for mitigating these risks, we know of no simple remedy that would eliminate them. pubtype: Periodical doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2009 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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