The vendor HyBlue says it can prevent the cold boot encryption hack discovered by Princeton researchers with a laptop security product announced Tuesday.
The cold boot vulnerability allows hackers to steal encryption keys from dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory in laptops that have been recently powered down. While Microsoft says such an attack is unlikely, Princeton researchers in February said it is possible because data previously thought to disappear immediately from DRAM persists for a while after the computer has been shut off.
HyBlue’s IceLock technology automatically deletes those keys out of memory and overwrites them with random data when there is a state change, such as screen saver activation, hibernation, or a user logging off or powering the computer down. When the user turns the computer back on, the normal password/login process ensues.
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