Encrypted Data Not Safe After All?
In the continuing arms race between data protectors and those who don’t like things that way, encryption has been the trick-taking card. Packages that allow users to encrypt data are really quite capable, more than enougt to scare off the casual cracker and quite difficult to break through even for powerful and dedicated systems. But it seems that experiments at Princeton have shown that skilled use of some simple tools can allow a hacker to recover the codes used as encryption keys from the DRAM chips in the machine. The thought used to be that the chips lost data as soon as power was shut off. But, some DRAMs retain the information for seconds or even minutes after the loss of power. And, freezing the chip with a blast of air cleaner or some commercial Freeze can extend this period even longer; enough for a hacker to tap the chip and recover the keys. With the keys, the hacker can read the cypher with relative ease. I’m sure there will be more comment on this in the future. It all adds to the drama.
