On Tuesday, April 03, 2018 01:50:45 AM Richard Hector wrote: > On 03/04/18 01:07, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: > > the plaintext passwords would > > disappear from RAM (except to the extent that (iiuc) there are (NSA) ways > > to recover the contents of RAM if power is restored to the machine > > fairly quickly). > > I'm not sure you actually need to be the NSA for that. Anything you can > plug in that can do DMA can probably do it - firewire is one option, but > for something with PCI(e) or other slots you could probably plug in a > special card (or maybe just a firewire card). I think the RAM will > persist for a few minutes at least.
Yes, I'm sure you're right--or at least for some number of seconds--I guess I could look up the refresh timing requirement for a modern RAM chip, that would probably give an order of magnitude figure, and with safety factors that are surely built in, that figure could be multiplied by two or more.
