RAM guru question?

[Jim March]

Well...there's been some research done that says "standard" RAM (the kind
that empties when you power it down) can actually hold data longer than we
thought - five, even ten minutes sometimes.

Longer if you spray it with something very cold!

A known attack against systems protected by whole-disk-encryption is to
catch them in a standby state (RAM still active), open the memory bay lid on
the bottom of most laptops, spray it good with something very cold, pull the
memory modules out and scan them in a specialized system designed to look
for and read the whole-disk-encryption password.

If you're coming into the US from overseas and there's a chance US Customs
will want to look at your laptop, best to completely power it down at least
a half hour before hitting the checkpoints, just to make sure.

"Standard" RAM (or "DRAM" or "volitile RAM") is much faster (and a much
older design) than the new Flash RAM we use on USB memory sticks, camera
memory, SSDs and the like.  Flash RAM holds it's data even with no voltage
applied.  The faster sort of RAM we use as working memory can't do that - at
least not yet.  That will change eventually, or Flash RAM will get a hell of
a lot faster...then we'll have a whole bunch of security issues to deal
with.

Jim

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Eric Cope <eric.cope at gmail.com> wrote:

> DRAM won't data longer than a few seconds with refreshing. SRAM won't hold
> data after power down. There are secondary effects like hysteresis, but that
> takes advanced levels of analysis that 99.9999% of people don't even know
> how to analyze.
>
> Eric
>
> On Feb 8, 2011, at 12:04 PM, mike enriquez <mylinux at cox.net> wrote:
>
> > Is there a RAM Guru in the group that can shed some light on my RAM
> question?
> > I understand that programs upload into ram when a computer starts, but
> how can we make sure that the ram gets emptied when a computer is shut off.
> When a computer is shut off are there any program still living and enjoying
> themselves in the RAM chip?
> > I would assume there is software to make sure your ram is clean but I
> don't know anything thing about this.
> > Can anyone in the group explain this to me.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Mike Enriquez
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