Bugtraq: Re: [Full-disclosure] Firewire Attack on Windows Vista

[Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers <bugtraq () planetcobalt net>]

On 2008-03-09 Larry Seltzer wrote:
> > > WRT the DMA access over FireWire it's but a bad response since it
> > > doesn't get the point!
> > > 1. Drive encryption won't help against reading the memory.
> > > 2. The typical user authentication won't help, we're at hardware level
> > >    here, and no OS needs to be involved.
> > > 3. The computer is up (and running; see above), no hibernate or sleep
> > >    is involved here.
> So on a freshly-booted system with drive encryption you can read
> whatever you want on the disk? 
Yes. Simply because the drive needs to be decrypted for the system to
boot. Without decrypting the disk there's not difference to a switched-
off box, because it's utterly unusable to anyone.

Regards
Ansgar Wiechers
-- 
"All vulnerabilities deserve a public fear period prior to patches
becoming available."
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