Cryogenically frozen RAM bypasses disk encryption methods (2008)

Re:Cryogenically frozen RAM bypasses disk encryption methods... by Canada on Sunday June 12, 2016 @03:33AM (#11887103)

I heard that when power is interrupted ACPI still has time to inform the system, and not only that, the CPU will continue to execute many, many instructions before it's finally deprived of power. The computer seems to turn off instantly to us, but at the time scale the CPU operates at it's actually quite a while. I heard this was enough time for an operating system to detect power failure and zero out megabytes of memory.

Anyone know if this is true or not?

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Re:Cryogenically frozen RAM bypasses disk encryption methods... by derefr on Sunday June 12, 2016 @04:36AM (#11887240)

> zero out megabytes of memory

Is there some reason that RAM has to be zeroed serially? It seems like nothing's theoretically stopping the entirety of a RAM memory module from being erased, in parallel, in a single memory write cycle.

Would it be very much more costly to design a memory module with a signal line that, when high, would e.g. turn a write into a write on every memory cell on the module?

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Re:Cryogenically frozen RAM bypasses disk encryption methods... by frozenport on Sunday June 12, 2016 @05:54AM (#11887423)

There is an easier way, ram needs to be refreshed. If you can ensure the refresh pin gets messed up then first, reads become destructive among other things.

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