Disk encryption not secure at all, researchers say

Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/researchers-dis.html

Now what do I do?

 

Use a TPM then.

 

Don't leave your laptop alone in public places, and always shut it down when you're not using it.

 

Stop downloading pr0n.

 

He encrypts his porn? Poor show, share it around for the benefit of all.

 

er..... isn't ram a little on the volatile side?

edit: not volatile enough... or so it seams.... and it hacks with ubuntu.... btw, i think there must be a way for encryption software to clean the key from ram....

 

Eh, just uninstall the sticks when you shut down! Problem solved.

 

Fresh sticks every time you load up... Course you'd have to destroy the old ones.

 

Nope, they took the sticks out and still got the key. Seems the only way to stop this is to have some battery powered device that writes random bits into memory on shutdown.

 

Let's not even go there. I'm at college, and I have roommates.

Couldn't the operating system do that - like have one last program that completely resides in RAM and runs after the OS is shutdown, overwriting all (or nearly all) data in RAM and then killing itself?

 

what if it's encrypted on a flash drive???

 

Woah, that's scary. :/

 

No, the computer will have no power, how could it execute that?

What is? The data? If so then this would still work.