Report: Disk encryption security defeatable through DRAM vulnerability
Ed Felten writes on Freedom-to-Tinker:
Today eight colleagues and I are releasing a significant new research result. We show that disk encryption, the standard approach to protecting sensitive data on laptops, can be defeated by relatively simple methods. We demonstrate our methods by using them to defeat three popular disk encryption products: BitLocker, which comes with Windows Vista; FileVault, which comes with MacOS X; and dm-crypt, which is used with Linux.The root of the problem lies in an unexpected property of today's DRAM memories. DRAMs are the main memory chips used to store data while the system is running. Virtually everybody, including experts, will tell you that DRAM contents are lost when you turn off the power. But this isn't so. Our research shows that data in DRAM actually fades out gradually over a period of seconds to minutes, enabling an attacker to read the full contents of memory by cutting power and then rebooting into a malicious operating system.
Link to paper site, Link to PDF, and a video is below. (thanks, Jake Appelbaum)
UPDATE, 9:44am PT: Declan McCullagh at News.com has an analysis piece here.
(Cross-posted from Boing Boing)
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I don't know why this is a surprise. RAM latency attacks have always been taken into consideration by products like PGP, though I don't know if they are vulnerable for the whole disk encryption issue.
To actually use an exploit like this, the attacker would need physical access to your machine while it is running and has already accessed sensitive data, and the data is in physical memory. They would then have to cut power to your system and hope that it can boot to their memory scanning program without overwriting the portion of memory with the information in it.
Excellent job detailing the vulnerability. Do I hear the sound of Border Security goons cheering?
Kennedy assasination @ 4:18 = Funny.