Backdoor to PGP password

[the shadow]

This is a quote from an article
(http://www.matasano.com/log/695/windows-remote-memory-access-though-
firewire/


"I think one of the small-but-cool things that came out of my work on
firewire memory access was the ability to recover plain text
real-mode-disk-crypto passwords (like PGP Wholedisk or similar) from the real
mode bios keyboard buffer. Of course, this is just one of the many treasures
that lies around in memory, but it¹s not the first thing you think of. You
boot your laptop, enter your disk crypto (or bios disk locker, or whatever)
password out in realmode, and it stays there, forever, because it¹s never
used again now you¹re in protected mode.

I thought it was neat, anyway."

There have been a few articles about Police agencies "cracking" passwords. I
wonder if this is how they did it.

I also wonder if this will allow you to bypass the PGP password for e-mail.

Hud

[Juergen Nieveler]

Post by the shadow
There have been a few articles about Police agencies "cracking"
passwords. I wonder if this is how they did it.
I also wonder if this will allow you to bypass the PGP password for e-mail.

Sure... they just need somebody to enter the password while their
sniffing device is hooked up to the Firewire port ;-)

While the Firewire-attack is scary, it still requires somebody to have
physical access to a running machine.

Juergen Nieveler

[the shadow]

Post by Juergen Nieveler

Post by the shadow
There have been a few articles about Police agencies "cracking"
passwords. I wonder if this is how they did it.
I also wonder if this will allow you to bypass the PGP password for e-mail.

Sure... they just need somebody to enter the password while their
sniffing device is hooked up to the Firewire port ;-)
While the Firewire-attack is scary, it still requires somebody to have
physical access to a running machine.
Juergen Nieveler

Running? Sleep mode is good enough. Most of the people I work with rarely
power off their laptops completly. it takes too long to boot up. Just close
the lid and let it go into sleep mode.

It is not that hard to steal a laptop.

[Juergen Nieveler]

Post by the shadow
Running? Sleep mode is good enough. Most of the people I work with
rarely power off their laptops completly. it takes too long to boot
up. Just close the lid and let it go into sleep mode.
It is not that hard to steal a laptop.

True enough - but after the latest attacks against HD encryption, IT
departments around the world should be scrambling to deactivate sleep
mode anyway.

Besides - with a stolen laptop you can't steal the password like
described above.. the password doesn't stay in the keyboard buffer that
long. So while you could steal all data from the laptop, stealing the
password still would require physical access to the machine right as
the user is typing in his password...

Juergen Nieveler