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Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption
Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption
Posted Feb 21, 2008 16:11 UTC (Thu) by johnkarp (subscriber, #39285)In reply to: Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption by flewellyn
Parent article: Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption
Many system firmwares have the option to do a full memory test, which presumably overwrites RAM at some point. You'd have to set a BIOS password to keep them from skipping it. Though newer boards seem to have that option less often in the interest of faster boots.
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Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption
Posted Feb 25, 2008 7:04 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
The only solution to this sort of attack is to have the keys always in encrypted form in-memory.`Then when the system needs to have the key it can be decrypted and accessed quickly in CPU cache. The sort of memory used in CPU cache is different then the sort that is used in main system memory. So hopefull that cpu cache, besides being much faster, does not have the same properties of regular Dram. Or maybe have a built-in hardware tripwire that would 'zap' the ram in case of sudden power loss. Nothing that would destroy the ram, but enough to flip all the bits back to zero or something like that. I expect that the only total solution would be change the design of the hardware like that. Hopefully something that could be built-into the ram so that you would not have to modify the design of the motherboard.
Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption
Posted Feb 29, 2008 22:19 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]
The only solution to this sort of attack is to have the keys always in encrypted form in-memory.`Then when the system needs to have the key it can be decrypted and accessed quickly in CPU cache.
Where do you keep the key for the key?
And how does a program put something in the CPU cache without it also being in memory?
Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption
Posted Mar 2, 2008 5:27 UTC (Sun) by kevinbsmith (subscriber, #4778) [Link]
"Where do you keep the key for the key?" Keep in mind that "Security" is a spectrum, not a boolean. I have heard that it is pretty quick (and effective) to simply test every x-bit value that exists in RAM, and see if it happens to be the key you are seeking. A billion tries don't take too long. But if the in-RAM key were an encrypted version, and the key for the key were stored at some other random location in RAM, then you just turned the search from n to n^2. Not a bad trick if n is measured in gigas. Another option would be to split the real key up into several pieces, and store them in disparate locations. I haven't thought that one through enough to decide if it would be better or worse than the key-for-a-key option. Nor how many pieces would be optimal. Seems promising based on a few seconds of thought. Is either of these approaches Perfect? Absolutely not. Are they enough of an improvement to be worth doing? I would guess so, but would be interested to hear other opinions. If it turned out to be effective against one specific, popular, real-world attack, and the cost is low, sure. Looking a bit deeper, an attacker could look at memory patterns (and/or source code) to reduce the search space. But at least that would require the attacker to create a custom attack rather than using an off-the-shelf cracking script. Again, it's about raising the bar, when the costs of doing so are lower than the benefits.
Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption
Posted Mar 3, 2008 6:40 UTC (Mon) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
Searching all of memory for a given bitstring is indeed very quick -- a few seconds. But, err, if you already know what the bitstring for the key is, why are you searching for it? What you'd really be searching for would be the data structure that's holding the key -- the OS has some way to figure out which random-looking bitstring in those gigabytes of memory is really the key, so you can too, by finding the right data structures and chasing the right pointers. AFAICT that means that the techniques you're suggesting won't work -- if the key is split into multiple pieces, then don't look for the pieces, look for the data structure that lists off where all of the pieces are so they can be found again by the OS.
Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption
Posted Mar 8, 2008 13:55 UTC (Sat) by kevinbsmith (subscriber, #4778) [Link]
You missed the point. If you know that a key exists somewhere in RAM, it is fast and simple to read a key's worth of data starting at every byte in the system, and attempt a decode of every one until you find one that works. Brute force with one giga of attempts. No knowledge of OS, language, data structures, or app code is required, aside from knowing the encryption algorithm and key size (which is usually easy to find). Dead simple. And quite effective. Splitting the key, or having an encrypted key with its key elsewhere in RAM would foil that attack. At that point, the cracker would have to know something about the specific app and craft a custom attack, which makes the attack quite a lot more difficult/expensive. It's like locking your car so the stereo thief breaks into the unlocked car instead. It won't block a highly motivated/funded attacker, but will keep out some script kiddies. If the cost of splitting the key is near zero, it might be a good benefit/cost tradeoff.