Disk encryption 'no silver bullet'

Article;

Disk encryption, which people rely on for protecting sensitive data on laptops, can fairly easily be foiled, security researchers said in presenting a paper on a 'cold-boot attack' at the Usenix security conference on Wednesday.

There are no silver bullets. So watch out, ther may be a werewolf about....

AndyC said:

There are no silver bullets. So watch out, ther may be a werewolf about....

*cough*Agile*cough*

Agreed.

littleguru said:

There's probably no silver bullet solution for anything... At least nothing that I ever bought seemed to have worked forever

I really dislike disk encryption for maintenance reasons.

I really like encrypted files using some type of keyring Dongle. Or alternatively encrypted files using some type of biometric ID.

The tools to do this were released at HOPE a few weeks ago, very interesting and very scary. They also mentioned something interesting about the Apple OS’s, whenever you are logged in, the OS keeps a copy of your username and password in cleartext in the RAM. According to them, this was reported to Apple a little over 10 years ago, and they refuse to change it (something about how the UN/PW combo is used for silent elevation, scary on its own…). But when paired with a cold boot attack it is very dangerous.