This report is cool. Chillingly cool.
Who would have expected that freezing and hacking could be a tandem useful in extracting data from RAMs.
German researchers at Erlangen University discovered or devised a method for accessing the information contained in a RAM. The method involves freezing and data dumping. The Erlangen University researchers successfully extracted the data stored in the RAM of a Samsung Nexus by freezing the device to a temperature of -15 degrees Celsius and restarting it in fastboot mode to dump the RAM contents for inspection.
This method basically enables the hacking of stored data without having the crack the password or storage encryption protecting the device.
The whole process works by exploiting the the phenomenon called "remanence." In remanence, the excessive cooling down of the RAM cuts off power to the RAM and almost instantaneously erases the RAM's stored data. However, once the RAM goes back to room temperature, the data thought to have been erased after the power supply cutoff is retained for a couple or more seconds. This few seconds is all the time needed to access the RAM's contents.
Some of the data that can be accessed in the RAM include passwords, emails, text messages, photos and other images, as well as browsing history.
This may sound a bit alarming considering that encryption may even be bypassed. Now, you could no longer feel so assured misplacing your RAM-bearing device even if you had it password-protected or encrypted.
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