GPG Key

by Kevin on May 22, 2008
in Journal

I have generated a new GPG key for various encryption purposes. If you have the capability, please try and use it.

Fingerprint: 120B 1082 1C39 7542 8B42  D6A7 F87B 7CC9 04EF 0F0C

Key ID: 04EF0F0C

Cool Chips

by Kevin on February 25, 2008
in Journal

A few geeks at Princeton University have found a way to read the contents of RAM long after the system has been powered down.

Basically all you do is freeze the chips with liquid nitrogen.

This does have a fairly significant impact on disk encryption software which is the most interesting part of the discovery. In a lot of the encryption programs the encryption key is stored as plain text in RAM. Once you get the key it is game over for your privacy/security. Vista’s Bitlocker, Apple’s FileVault and the open source TrueCrypt are all affected, amongst others, though the first two can be made immune to this attack by using another authentication method such as a smart card.

Edit: The Doctor has a better writeup.