Security boffins unveil UnBitLocker
BitLocker, meet UnBitLocker.
Word arrives from The Electronic Frontier Foundation that a crack team of researchers - including the Foundation's own Seth Schoen - have discovered a gaping security flaw in everyday disk encryption technologies, including Microsoft's BitLocker as well as TrueCrypt, dm-crypt, and Apple's FileVault.
If a machine is screen-locked or left in sleep or hibernation mode, Schoen and his cohorts proclaim, an attacker can circumvent disk encryption simply by powering the machine down and quickly re-booting to an external hard drive.
You see, DRAM tends to retain data for up to a minute after power down. When a sleeping machine is "cold booted," its encryption keys stay right there in memory - and they're ripe for the taking.
