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Sleeping Ain't Always Safe

When I was a kid, I owned a wall hanging made by my grandfather that was inscribed with an old English evening prayer -- including "If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee, Lord, my Soul to take."

I treasured it, but it also scared the bejeepers out of me. I wanted to wake up.

Now, we have to worry about our computers either never waking up or waking up hacked.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation claims that encrypted disks can be, er, decrypted while the computer sleeps. BitLocker from Microsoft was cracked by EFF and Princeton University experts by finding passwords in RAM, which isn't flushed during sleep or hibernation.

Microsoft isn't the only vendor with this the problem; Apple has it, too!

Posted by Doug Barney on February 25, 2008


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