I was planning to give a try to Xen for my future virtual servers.
This blog made me think twice. I think I am going to check KVM first.
Author Archives: phocean
My article in the magazine, Hakin9
I am proud that my first article for a computer magazine was published.
The magazine, Hakin9, is specialized into Security and Hacking. My article was an overall introduction to network attacks. Some day, I will probably post an english translation around here.
It was an interesting and exciting exercise, like writing on this blog. I wish I can afford enough time and do it more often.
Cold boot attack, not a threat to Full disk encryption (FDE)
Since the new cold boot attack hack is on the news, touching most of the software encryption solutions, I have wondered if it had any chance to concern also hardware encryption.
Hardware encryption is provided by a few laptop makers, generally on high-range an business models.
It has much less performance impact than software encryption, and protect the data independently from your system configuration and its partitions.
Full disk encryption is the so called hardware encryption technology used by Lenovo on my Thinkpad.
Disk encryption methods : hacked !
Damned !
A team of researchers found a way to defeat all the most common disk encryption methods – including dm-crypt for Linux that I previously described on this blog.
A team of researchers found a way to defeat all the most common disk encryption methods – including dm-crypt for Linux that I previously described on this blog.
All systems are actually concerned, because the attack is low level. It is based on the RAM chips properties. After shutdown, and therefore no more electricity powering, a chip will still contain some readable information during a few seconds.
The data contained is deteriorating, but for example if you cool the chip enough, for example with a computer dry air dust cleaner, you can keep the data several minutes !
The problem concerning data encryption is that the decryption key is kept in RAM, and that way be stolen to read all your data.
The attack would not so easy in practice, if suspend-to-ram did not exist.
But as many users, including me, use heavily suspend-to-ram with their laptop, this issue is rather problematic…
The team provides a rather impressive video :
I no longer use dm-crypt since my Thinkpad provides hardware encryption, but I wonder now where the key is stored in my case. I don’t think it is in RAM, but I have to check it to make sure.I will do it tomorrow, since I need to rest now.
My new toy : Thinkpad T61
As a replacement of my old but reliable Vaio, I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T61.
About laptop PC, I have always been conveiced that the best pieces of hardware are found among Sony and Lenovo (ex-IBM). In tough or ultra-light categories, I would add Panasonic, but it is not the kind of laptop I am looking for.
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Totem : black screen issue affecting all your XVideo output
I confirm the black screen issue with Totem.
Actually it changes the contrast for all the environment, and of course using Mplayer or the gstreamer test program just after also gave back a black screen.
Therefore I had been convinced it was a driver issue (reporting a bug to Nvidia and posting on this forum), until I find the contrast setting of Totem was the cause of all that mess.
Note that I am right now using Debian Lenny.