Full Report
So felten et al basically figured that cooling dram chips allows an attacker to move them to another machine where they can be leeched! The geek in me cant help but say “COOL!” According to the comments posted (by Eugene Spafford no less) this sort of attack is fairly well known.. but.. for this humble fanboy, i think its still pretty rocking!
Analysis Summary
This summary is based *only* on the provided context snippet, which describes a research finding related to cold boot attacks on DRAM, not a specific, formally assigned vulnerability identifier (like a singular CVE).
# Vulnerability: Cold Boot Attack on Data Remanence in DRAM
## CVE Details
- CVE ID: N/A (No specific CVE mentioned in context)
- CVSS Score: N/A
- CWE: N/A (Related weakness is likely related to data remanence or side-channel/physical attacks)
## Affected Systems
- Products: Implied to affect systems utilizing DRAM modules protected by disk encryption technologies like BitLocker and FileVault.
- Versions: Not specified.
- Configurations: Systems where physical access allows manipulation of DRAM chips (cooling and removal/transfer).
## Vulnerability Description
Researchers (Felten et al.) discovered that cooling DRAM chips allows an attacker to preserve the existing data contents (data remanence) long enough after power loss to extract the memory contents by physically moving the DRAM module to another machine for "leeching." This technique directly targets encrypted data stored in RAM, potentially bypassing full-disk encryption mechanisms.
## Exploitation
- Status: Research findings published. Implied to be a known concept according to comments mentioned (though new to the narrator).
- Complexity: Assumed to require physical access and specialized knowledge/equipment (cooling agents).
- Attack Vector: Physical
## Impact
- Confidentiality: High (Encryption keys or sensitive data stored in RAM can be exfiltrated).
- Integrity: Low (Direct impact is data extraction, not modification of running systems).
- Availability: Low (Briefly impacts the availability of the targeted machine during the physical removal of memory).
## Remediation
### Patches
- No specific patches are mentioned in the provided text, as the findings relate to hardware properties (data remanence) rather than a software bug.
### Workarounds
- Physical hardening and immediate secure shutdown/power-down procedures when the machine is unattended, especially in environments where physical access is possible.
## Detection
- No specific detection indicators or tools are mentioned in the context. Detection would generally involve monitoring for physical tampering with system hardware or specialized memory analysis tools run post-attack.
## References
- Vendor advisories: None listed.
- Relevant links - defanged:
- hxxp://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1257 (Original research link mentioned)