ghacks Technology News

Software to defeat Disk Encryption released

You might remember the research paper published by the Center for Information Technology Policy at the University of Princeton that described how disk encryption could be defeated by taking a snapshot of the system memory and analyzing that memory for data and keys. I covered the Defeating Disk Encryption story here at Ghacks in February)

The developers of the application have released the software, or more precisely the source code, that they have created for their research paper which can be freely downloaded from the project’s website. Available are the tools to create an image of the system memory, the automatic key finding applications and a program for error-correction for AES key schedules.

Two memory imaging tools (USB / PXE Imaging Tools and EFI Netboot Imaging Tools) and Automatic key-finding (AESKeyFinder and RSAKeyFinder) are available on the website.

The research paper can also be downloaded from the website along with frequently asked questions.

Update: The research papers and source code are no longer available on the University website. It is not clear why they have been removed but the pages return a 404 not found error when they are opened in a web browser.

Update 2: The research paper and source code is still available. The university made the decision to change the url structure of their website without adding proper redirects to avoid inaccessible pages because of links still pointing to the old destination pages. You can access the research paper on Cold Boot Attacks on encryption keys here.

The page links to the full research paper in pdf format, the introductory blog post, frequently asked questions, the experiment guide, source code, and videos and images.

Especially the images and videos can be handy to get a quick understanding of how disk encryption can be defeated with the technology.

Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.

Related Articles:

Disk Encryption Software TrueCrypt 6.3 Released
Disk Encryption Software TrueCrypt 7.1a Released
TrueCrypt 7.1 Encryption Software Released
Defeating Disk Encryption
WinGuard Pro Free, Access Control And Encryption Software



About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.

Author: , Sunday July 20, 2008 -
Tags:, ,


Responses so far:

  1. Dante says:

    And this is why you should always power down your PC when not in use :)

    Not only does it save the environment, it saves your arse.

  2. Tech Bold says:

    LOL! I agree with Dante. :)

Leave a Reply   Follow Ghacks   Subscribe To Comment Rss

Subscribe without commenting

© 2005-2012 Ghacks.net. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - About Us