As the old adage goes, any security measure is pretty pointless if the attacker has physical access to the machine.

But surely disk encryption should at least slow this down … right?

Well apparently not, as when booted systems like Bitlocker and Filevault store the key in ram, all the attacker need do, is cool the ram stick with an inverted air duster can, take out the DIMM and place it into another machine where the key can be read from.

Scary stuff, there’s even some information as to what data still remains in the RAM once the machine is powered off …

Check the video at this link out:

https://citp.princeton.edu/memory/

[via: engadget ]