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On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 01:33:03PM -0500, Martin wrote:
> > It gets worse. With a special firewire or USB-2 device you can simply
> > dump the entierty of the computers memory at will using the DMA
> > interface. More recent AMD chips have a mechanism to protect from that
> > attact, essentially extending process memory protection to external
> > devices, but most don't. Assuming that brand new protection works might
> > be wrong too.
> >
> > A SDRAM chip with built-in zeroization would be very nice.
> >
> >   
> 
> It would have to work whenever power is cut, but how would it do that?

Usual way is to include a backup capacitor that provides a second or so
of power for the zeroization hardware. Pretty standard stuff for
high-security co-processors like IBM's 4xxx something one.

- -- 
http://petertodd.org
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