Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption [LWN.net]

Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption

Posted Feb 21, 2008 18:52 UTC (Thu) by alecs1 (subscriber, #46699)
In reply to: Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption by JoeBuck
Parent article: Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption

Two comments about available techonogy(I don't know how usefull):
1.At least in Romania and Germany they have Schuko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuko) as a
standard, the pins are 19 mm and the hole in the socket almost as deep as the lenght of the
pins. Someone would have to chop the plug seriously in order to get to the pins, I tryed right
now, and there is no space to do anything without choping the plug/socket. (these schuko will
get replaced, you need such force to pull them out that many times you also pull the socket
from the wall).
2.Does this represent such an inovation that it will get a patent? I remember powering a
socket like that myself, out of curiosity, this is a trivial idea.

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Plug too hard? Jack the cable.

Posted Feb 22, 2008 3:02 UTC (Fri) by midg3t (guest, #30998) [Link]

Just remove the plastic sheath from the cable and poke your power source into the live & neutral wires. Unplug machine, profit.

Cold Reboot Attacks on Disk Encryption

Posted Feb 22, 2008 4:20 UTC (Fri) by knobunc (subscriber, #4678) [Link]

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/hotplug_1.html has some of the relevant tech
they use for this.  I looked at the site and they have a few suggested methods for hooking in
to the target computer's power:

The Easy: If it is plugged into a power strip, you plug their UPS into the same strip then
pull the plug to mains power.  Take the computer, power strip and UPS off to your lab.  (Same
works if the outlet has 2 sockets, just unplug from the one that the computer is not using and
plug the ups into that then take the outlet with you)

The Harder: If there is no power strip, remove the outlet from the wall (while the computer is
still plugged in).  Attach some special jumper cables to the screws on the back and cut
(physically) the mains power.

The Hardest: Strip the power cord to the computer and attach the UPS wires directly to the
wires inside the cord.

-ben