[rescue] Oh no! This poor Origin server.....

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 @ 15:22 -0500, Phil Stracchino said:

> On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 02:17:10PM -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> > Do they not seem to realize that there's less of a chance of getting
> > useful data out of a long-since powered-down DRAM chip than there is in
> > getting useful data out of the microscopic impressions in the tops of
> > the desks that they gleefull rid themselves of at public auctions?
> 
> It's rather scary what you can recover data from with a modern SQUID.

I think that is stretching even optimistic state-of-the-art
capabilities.

Most DRAMs are rather destructive to their contents as power fades.
They don't just die at their last state: at modern system speeds power
off is a gradual failure.

I'm very skeptical.

I think modern DRAMs unpowered are going to lose their coherence rather
quickly.  They rely on a lot of power and high frequency updates to even
be reliable.

Now... there is the new magnetic RAMs... that should be interesting in a
security context.

The biggest problem though is that egress auditors have no idea how to
do their job in most cases.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["The object of war is not to die for your
country but to make the other bastard die for his." -- General George S.
Patton]