Mitigation of cold boot attack using an encrypted memory controller

Abstract

RAMs which are widely used in PCs and laptops are likely to break the popular supposition that data in them is lost whenever power supply is cut down. It has been proved in 2008 by a group of researchers that RAMs are no longer volatile in nature. The data remanence behaviour of DRAMs have allowed to retrieve memory contents when the power has been switched off by an attack known as cold boot attack. In cold boot attack, memory can be frozen using a refrigerant and then removed from the computer. It is then quickly placed into a specially designed system that reads out its content, targeting encryption keys and other sensitive information. Also, the standard mechanisms for protecting sensitive data on laptops, smartphones, PCs and Macs is no longer safe and secure. Several design practices have been discussed in the thesis which are being adopted to mitigate such attacks. Mitigation of Cold Boot Attack by providing encryption support in the memory controller is a promising technique which has been proposed in the thesis. The proposed memory security model protects digital content and software stored in untrusted system memory from physical tamper. The thesis introduces a set of architecture innovations that aim for the implementation of the proposed security model. Further, a new key storage mechanism is proposed. Also, analysis on the overhead occurred due to the adoption of this scheme has been discussed.