Thread: SSD Recovery?

Originally Posted by DancingCorpse

That's why I said if the memory modules themselves are fine, then if there was one of the same model nearby, you could swap them out for a drive with connections that still work. I have actually done this with a Hard Drive before in a desperate attempt to get the data back. The motor was broken, and I switched the plates over to the good drive to copy the data. It worked just long enough to get the data all copied. Don't know if it would have worked longer though, I had to scrap both HDs since they no longer had the vacuum seal.

That's intense man, it reminds of doing things like swapping out a BIOS chip on a hot computer to flash one that got hosed... seriously sensitive operations. Definitely HC level computer user stuff in your case there!

Originally Posted by SoySoldier

That's intense man, it reminds of doing things like swapping out a BIOS chip on a hot computer to flash one that got hosed... seriously sensitive operations. Definitely HC level computer user stuff in your case there!

Reminds me of an encryption attack I recently read a paper about. Have you heard of a cold boot encryption attack? There's several ways it can be done but the basic idea is that encrypted data on a HDD is loaded into RAM when the user enters their username/password to access it. If you can get physical access to the laptop, you can cool the RAM chips down to low temperatures and slow the decay of the decrypted data in RAM long enough for you to place the RAM in another computer and have access. The authors of the paper I read said they were getting upwards of like 98-99% accuracy with the cold boot attacks and some error-correction code on several modern encryption schemes. Legit hack with can be super dangerous if an attacker can get into the room with your laptop after you've logged in

Fun fact: Mac OSX stores your username/password/encryption key in RAM...huge vulnerability if an attacker knows where to look.

Here's a link to the paper if anybody is interested. It's a pretty cool topic for anybody interested in computer security/forensics/etc.
https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/coldboot-sec08.pdf

huh, interesting. That could easily be thwarted by just a random injection of random information into the RAM each time there is a shut down sequence, though.

Originally Posted by salty99

Reminds me of an encryption attack I recently read a paper about. Have you heard of a cold boot encryption attack? There's several ways it can be done but the basic idea is that encrypted data on a HDD is loaded into RAM when the user enters their username/password to access it. If you can get physical access to the laptop, you can cool the RAM chips down to low temperatures and slow the decay of the decrypted data in RAM long enough for you to place the RAM in another computer and have access. The authors of the paper I read said they were getting upwards of like 98-99% accuracy with the cold boot attacks and some error-correction code on several modern encryption schemes. Legit hack with can be super dangerous if an attacker can get into the room with your laptop after you've logged in

Fun fact: Mac OSX stores your username/password/encryption key in RAM...huge vulnerability if an attacker knows where to look.

Here's a link to the paper if anybody is interested. It's a pretty cool topic for anybody interested in computer security/forensics/etc.
https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/coldboot-sec08.pdf

Huh, I'm watching Burn Notice right now, and they are actually using this method to steal data off a laptop.

Season 6 is already started. First Episode is on Hulu.