Speaker 1: If you see your computer being hacked right in front
Speaker 1: of you, like the cursor moving on its own command prompts,
Speaker 1: flashing files, locking up, your first instinct is probably to
Speaker 1: just reach around the back of the machine and yank
Speaker 1: the power cord out of the wall.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I mean it is absolute total panic. You
Speaker 2: really just want to stop the bleeding right then and there, right.
Speaker 1: But according to the pioneers of modern cyber forensics, doing
Speaker 1: that is actually the absolute worst thing you can do. Like,
Speaker 1: you aren't stopping the hacker, you are actively destroying the
Speaker 1: crime scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a reality of incident response that goes against well,
Speaker 2: basically every natural instinct you have. When you kill a
Speaker 2: power you just obliterate the most valuable evidence you could
Speaker 2: possibly get your hands on.
Speaker 1: So welcome to this deep dive. Our mission today is
Speaker 1: to explore the incredibly complex, honestly almost magical world of
Speaker 1: memory forensics. We're looking at how investigators catch advanced, stealthy malware.
Speaker 2: Right, the kind of threats that never even write a
Speaker 2: single file to a hard drive.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Investigators actually catch them by freezing and analyzing the invisible,
Speaker 1: fleeting world of RAM. And we are pulling our insights
Speaker 1: today from the definitive guide on the subject. It's called
Speaker 1: the Art of Memory Forensics.
Speaker 2: Which was written by the creators of the Volatility framework.
Speaker 2: By the way, incredible resource.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we are going on an expedition today for you,
Speaker 1: starting from the physical silicon chips on your motherboard all
Speaker 1: the way up into the logical, heavily guarded VIP rooms
Speaker 1: of the operating system.
Speaker 2: And to catch a digital criminal, you really do have
Speaker 2: to understand the physical laws of the environment they're operating in, right,
Speaker 2: Because software doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: Right, It's tied to the physical machine entirely.
Speaker 2: It is entirely constrained by the physical hardware. So before
Speaker 2: we get into the malware itself, we kind of have
Speaker 2: to look at the hardware canvas, specifically the CPU, the
Speaker 2: memory management unit, and the RAM itself.
Speaker 1: And RAM is well, it's volatile memory. It's literally built
Speaker 1: out of microscopic capacitors that require a constant electrical charge
Speaker 1: to maintain their state. So no power, no data exactly.
Speaker 2: Hence why pulling the plug is such a disaster for
Speaker 2: an investigator, right.
Speaker 1: But while power loss is a vulnerability for the investigator,
Speaker 1: the most mind blowing physical vulnerability for the computer itself
Speaker 1: is something called DMA.
Speaker 2: Yes, DMA that stands for direct memory access, and I
Speaker 2: mean DMA completely changes the threat landscape.
Speaker 1: I've definitely heard that term thrown around. How exactly does
Speaker 1: DMA work Because normally the CPU is sort of the
Speaker 1: boss of the computer, right like, it handles every single request.
Speaker 3: Under normal circumstances.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can think of the CPU as an overworked CEO.
Speaker 2: But to speed things up, hardware designers realize the CPU
Speaker 2: really shouldn't waste its time micromanaging every tiny data.
Speaker 3: Transfer, so it delegates exactly.
Speaker 2: The CPU delegates bulk data transfers to a middle manager,
Speaker 2: which is the DMA controller. This manager handles moving massive
Speaker 2: amounts of data from say a network card or a
Speaker 2: graphics card, straight into the RAM, just completely bypassing the CEO.
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, secon and let's unpack this. If peripheral
Speaker 1: devices can use this DMA manager to read and write
Speaker 1: directly to the RAM without asking the CPU, doesn't that
Speaker 1: mean they're also acting without the operating system's permission?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't that a massive, gaping security backdoor built
Speaker 1: right into the motherboard?
Speaker 2: What's really fascinating here is that it is exactly that
Speaker 2: it's literally a hardware level bypass of all software security.
Speaker 1: That is crazy.
Speaker 2: Right. Architecture is like the old firewires standard or even
Speaker 2: modern PCI express buses. They support devices that act as
Speaker 2: bus masters, and a bus master can request control of
Speaker 2: the hardware bus and just initiate direct reads and rights
Speaker 2: to physical memory, and the OS doesn't know. The operating
Speaker 2: system has absolutely no idea that's even happening.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if someone plugs a malicious device into the
Speaker 1: right port on my machine, that device could theoretically just
Speaker 1: siphon off all my passwords or like encryption keys directly
Speaker 1: out of the physical memory. Yea, and my antivirus would
Speaker 1: just be completely blind.
Speaker 3: To itolute blind.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is the ultimate double edged sword in cybersecurity.
Speaker 2: On one hand, attackers can use this hardware trick to
Speaker 2: silently bypass all privileged separations and steal your data.
Speaker 3: But on the other.
Speaker 2: Hand, forensic investigators use the exact same DMA capability to
Speaker 2: copy the contents of an infected computer's RAM.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so they just grab everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they capture a perfect, pristine image of the crime
Speaker 2: scene without tipping off the malware that it's being watched.
Speaker 1: That is terrifying but also incredibly clever on the investigator's part,
Speaker 1: but brings up a really massive question for me. If
Speaker 1: physical memory is just this open playground that could be
Speaker 1: directly accessed and overwritten, why hasn't everything just collapsed?
Speaker 3: Well, the OS fights back.
Speaker 1: But how how is the operating system fighting back to
Speaker 1: safely run dozens of programs at the same time, Like
Speaker 1: how does your web browser not accidentally overwrite the memory
Speaker 1: space of your password manager?
Speaker 3: It fights back with an illusion.
Speaker 2: We have to move from the physical hardware to a
Speaker 2: concept called virtual memory. The operating system really on demand
Speaker 2: paging and address translation to keep every single process completely isolated.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're losing me just a bit with the terminology there.
Speaker 1: What exactly is demand paging? Right?
Speaker 2: Sorry? Think of physical RAM as a small, highly efficient
Speaker 2: work bench, and your hard drive is a massive, really
Speaker 2: slow filing cabinet.
Speaker 1: Okay, workbench and filing cabinet, got it.
Speaker 2: So demand paging is a system where the OS only
Speaker 2: puts the specific parts of a program onto the work
Speaker 2: bench that are actively being used right that very second, and.
Speaker 1: If a program goes idle if it.
Speaker 2: Goes idle, the OS pages it out. It just sweeps
Speaker 2: those files off the workbench and back into the filing
Speaker 2: cabinet to free up space for whatever you are actively
Speaker 2: working on.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, got it. So the OS is constantly shuffling
Speaker 1: things around behind the scenes, which I assume ties into
Speaker 1: that address translation thing you mentioned exactly, because I like
Speaker 1: to think of virtual memory like giving every single program
Speaker 1: its own fake map of a city, Like as far
Speaker 1: as the web browser knows it lives entirely alone at
Speaker 1: one main street in this massive, sprawling city.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's a great way to look at it.
Speaker 1: But then the password manager also thinks it lives alone
Speaker 1: at one main street in its own empty city. They
Speaker 1: never realize they are actually sharing the exact same physical
Speaker 1: silicon chips because the OS is constantly just changing the
Speaker 1: street signs.
Speaker 2: That is the perfect way to visualize it. Yeah, every
Speaker 2: process gets a continuous, flat virtual address space, and the
Speaker 2: memory manager chops that fake map up into tiny blocks,
Speaker 2: usually four kilobyte pages. Okay, and the physical memory is
Speaker 2: also chopped up into four kilobyte frames. The hardware specifically
Speaker 2: a component called the memory management unit or MMU, alongside
Speaker 2: a special CPU register called CR III. It acts as
Speaker 2: the universal translator.
Speaker 1: So it maps the fake city map to the real
Speaker 1: physical streets precisely. Okay, So what does this all mean
Speaker 1: for the investigator? Because if I'm a forensic analyst and
Speaker 1: I have a raw physical dump of RAM that I
Speaker 1: captured using that DM matrix, we talked about, how on
Speaker 1: earth do I find a specific piece of evidence. If
Speaker 1: a piece of malware is hiding a stolen password, it's
Speaker 1: hiding it at a fake address. That fake address doesn't
Speaker 1: exist in my physical dump.
Speaker 2: Right, so you have to reverse engineer the illusion. You
Speaker 2: basically have to do the exact same math the MMU
Speaker 2: hardware does, but you have to do it manually in software.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, walk me through that. How do you translate
Speaker 1: a fake address to a real one without just getting
Speaker 1: totally lost in the sea of hexadesmal numbers.
Speaker 2: Well, let's stick with your map analogy. Imagine the virtual address,
Speaker 2: the fake address the malware sees is broken down into
Speaker 2: three parts, a zip code, a street name, and a
Speaker 2: house number.
Speaker 1: Okay, zip code, street name, house number.
Speaker 2: When you want to find the physical location, you start
Speaker 2: by looking at that special CR three register we mentioned
Speaker 2: the CR three register acts like a master directory. It
Speaker 2: tells you exactly where to find the translation book for
Speaker 2: this specific program.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the CR three gets me to the right
Speaker 1: translation book exactly.
Speaker 2: From there, you take the first part of the malware's
Speaker 2: fake address, the zip code. You look up that zip
Speaker 2: code in the translation book and it points you to
Speaker 2: a specific neighborhood in the physical RAM tracking so far,
Speaker 2: Then you take the second part of the fake address,
Speaker 2: the street name. You look that up and it narrows
Speaker 2: your search down to a specific physical.
Speaker 3: Block of memory, and then the house number.
Speaker 2: Right. Finally, you take the last part of the virtual address,
Speaker 2: which is the exact house number or offset that tells
Speaker 2: you precisely how many bites down the street you need
Speaker 2: to walk to find the stolen password hiding in the
Speaker 2: physical RAM.
Speaker 1: It's basically a massive scavenger hunt. Like the first clue
Speaker 1: gives you the physical location of the second clue, which
Speaker 1: gives you the third clue, until you finally find the payload.
Speaker 2: It is a literal chain of pointers. And I mean
Speaker 2: doing this translation by hand for gigabytes of RAM would
Speaker 2: take a human being lifetimes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I can't even imagine.
Speaker 2: Which is exactly why tools like the Volatility framework are
Speaker 2: so revolutionary in memory forensics. Yeah, they emulate this exact
Speaker 2: hardware translation process automatically. They basically rebuild the fake city
Speaker 2: maps perfectly for every single process.
Speaker 1: So the investigator sees the computer exactly as the malware
Speaker 1: was seeing it at the exact moment the memory was frozen,
Speaker 1: which is incredible, but it raises another huge issue. If
Speaker 1: the operating system manages these fake maps and handles all
Speaker 1: these translations, then the OS holds all the keys to
Speaker 1: the kingdom it does, So, how does the OS protect
Speaker 1: its own memory from being overwritten? Like what stops a
Speaker 1: malicious program from just reaching out and altering the master
Speaker 1: translation book.
Speaker 2: This is where we get into strict privileged separation. The
Speaker 2: system is divided into rings of trust. On modern architectures,
Speaker 2: we primarily talk about ring three and ring zero.
Speaker 1: Okay, I love this concept. If we use like a
Speaker 1: nightclib analogy, Ring three is user mode. That is the crowded,
Speaker 1: chaotic main floor of the club. Exactly all your regular apps,
Speaker 1: your browser, your text editor, even the malware. Initially, they
Speaker 1: all just party out there on the main floor. They're
Speaker 1: completely untrusted. They can only see their own drinks. But
Speaker 1: Ring zero, on the other hand, is kernel mode. That
Speaker 1: is the ultras cure soundproof VIP room where the core
Speaker 1: operating system lives. You can't just walk from the main
Speaker 1: floor into the VIP room. You have to ask a bouncer,
Speaker 1: and that ask.
Speaker 2: Is a highly structured mechanism called a system call. A
Speaker 2: user program has to trigger an interrupt, which is essentially
Speaker 2: handing a specific request.
Speaker 3: To the bouncer.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, to make sure the bouncer knows exactly what
Speaker 2: to do, the operating system uses something called the IDT.
Speaker 3: That's the interrupt descriptor table.
Speaker 1: So the IDT is basically the bouncer's rolodex.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to think about it. If a
Speaker 2: program on the main floor asks to read a file
Speaker 2: from the hard drive, the CPU checks the IDT rolodex.
Speaker 2: It looks up the exact trusted piece of Ring zero
Speaker 2: kernel code that is authorized to safely read files on.
Speaker 1: Behalf of the user and it only runs.
Speaker 2: That, and it executes only that specific code. The IDT
Speaker 2: is absolute gospel.
Speaker 3: To the CPU.
Speaker 2: It dictates exactly where the hardware jumps to handle any
Speaker 2: specific event.
Speaker 1: But wait, if that rolodex is the ultimate source of
Speaker 1: truth for the CPU. What happens if malware is sophisticated
Speaker 1: enough to break into the VIP room, Like, what if
Speaker 1: it uses a pen to cross out the operating system's
Speaker 1: trusted instructions in the IDT and writes its own malicious
Speaker 1: instructions instead.
Speaker 2: Well, if malwa manages to do that, you are dealing
Speaker 2: with one of the most devastating forms of infection, a rootkit.
Speaker 2: Because the IDT is so critical, it's.
Speaker 3: A prime target for advanced attackers.
Speaker 1: Are there real world examples of that?
Speaker 2: Ooh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: There is a legendary piece of malware discussed in the
Speaker 2: forensics community called shadow Walker that did exactly this. It
Speaker 2: targeted a very specific entry in the rolodex, the page
Speaker 2: fault handler.
Speaker 1: A page fault Okay, that's tied to the demand paging
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, Right, It's what happens when a program
Speaker 1: asks for data that the OS has temporarily swept off
Speaker 1: the work bench into the filing cabinet.
Speaker 2: Exactly when a program asks for that missing data, the
Speaker 2: CPU triggers a page fault interrupt usually interrupt zero by E.
Speaker 2: The CPU checks the IDT rolodex, finds the OS code
Speaker 2: to go fetch the data from the heart and brings it.
Speaker 3: Back to the RAM.
Speaker 1: So what did shadow Walker do.
Speaker 2: Shadow Walker hijacked that specific entry. It crossed out the
Speaker 2: OS's instructions and pointed the rolodex to its own malicious code.
Speaker 1: Wow. So the rootkit intercepts the request, But how does
Speaker 1: that actually hide the malware from an anti virus scan?
Speaker 2: By completely desynchronizing the CPU's view of memory. This is
Speaker 2: where it gets just brilliantly evil. When a security tool
Speaker 2: or an antivirus program tries to read the memory space
Speaker 2: where the malware is hiding to scan it for signatures, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it inadvertently triggers.
Speaker 3: That page fault.
Speaker 2: The CPU checks the compromise rolodex and runs the.
Speaker 3: Root kit's code.
Speaker 1: Oh no, The root kit.
Speaker 2: Looks at the request and essentially says, oh, you want
Speaker 2: to see what's in this room? Here? Look at this,
Speaker 2: and it hands the antivirus a duplicate, completely clean page
Speaker 2: of memory.
Speaker 1: You are kidding. It feeds the anti virus a fake,
Speaker 1: sanitized image exactly.
Speaker 2: The anti virus looks at the fake clean page, says
Speaker 2: looks fine to me, and moves on. But and this
Speaker 2: is the really crucial part. When the CPU actually goes
Speaker 2: to execute the code in that same memory space. The
Speaker 2: rootkit lets the CPU see the real malicious instructions.
Speaker 1: So it separates the read view from the execpo.
Speaker 2: Yes, the malware becomes completely invisible to the system itself
Speaker 2: because it controls the very eyes of the operating system.
Speaker 1: It's literally a digital invisibility cloak. And honestly, that is
Speaker 1: exactly why memory forensics is absolutely required here, because if
Speaker 1: you pull the raw memory using DMA and you take
Speaker 1: that memory dump offline to analyze it from another machine,
Speaker 1: the rootkit loses its power. Exactly like the rootkit can't
Speaker 1: intercept your gaze if you aren't using the infected operating
Speaker 1: system to look at it. You just use your forensic
Speaker 1: tools to audit that idt rolodex directly, and you can
Speaker 1: clearly see where the bouncer's instructions have been tampered with.
Speaker 2: You map out the true landscape, you bypass the rootkits lies,
Speaker 2: and you finally find out where the real action is
Speaker 2: happening in the physical ram.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've bypassed the hardware back doors, we've translated
Speaker 1: the fake virtual we've exposed the root kits hiding in
Speaker 1: the VIP room. Once you finally map out the true,
Speaker 1: uncorrupted memory landscape, what does the actual evidence look like?
Speaker 1: What do you mean like if I'm looking for a
Speaker 1: stolen credit card or a secret network connection back to
Speaker 1: a hacker server, how is that physically structured? In the RAM?
Speaker 3: Ah? Okay?
Speaker 2: Well, software is built on fundamental primitive data types, things
Speaker 2: like integers, single characters, and pointers. But to manage complex
Speaker 2: information efficiently, operating systems group those primitive types into larger
Speaker 2: data STRUCTURESTCHA. When you are digging through RAM, the most
Speaker 2: common structures you are hunting for are bitmaps, stacks, heaps,
Speaker 2: and records.
Speaker 1: Let's start with bitmaps, actually, because they are so incredibly elegant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you described this to me, one says a massive hotel.
Speaker 2: Yes, think of a massive hotel with exactly sixty five,
Speaker 2: five hundred and thirty five rooms. In the computing world.
Speaker 2: This perfectly represents all the possible network ports available on
Speaker 2: a Windows machine. If the operating system track the status
Speaker 2: of every single port using a massive, detailed database, it
Speaker 2: would waste a ridiculous amount of memory and processing time.
Speaker 1: So instead of a database, it uses a bitmap, which
Speaker 1: is just a tiny eight kilobyte ledger, Each room in
Speaker 1: the hotel, or each network port gets exactly one single
Speaker 1: bit of data allocated to.
Speaker 3: It, just a microscopic switch.
Speaker 1: Right. A zero means the port is closed, A one
Speaker 1: means the port is open.
Speaker 2: It is remarkably efficient. If a piece of malware silently
Speaker 2: opens a backdoor communication channel on port six, the operating
Speaker 2: system just flips the sixth bit in that tiny eight
Speaker 2: kilobyte ledger from a zero tool one So simple, right,
Speaker 2: And as an investigator, if you can locate that specific
Speaker 2: eight kilobyte array in your memory dump, you can read
Speaker 2: the binary and instantly know every single open port on
Speaker 2: the machine at the exact moment the RAM was captured.
Speaker 1: It's a perfect snapshot of the system's state. But I mean,
Speaker 1: a single bit just tells me if the door is
Speaker 1: open or closed. It is son to tell me who
Speaker 1: is walking through the door. Where's the actual data hiding?
Speaker 1: Where do I find the passwords?
Speaker 2: Well, for the juicy details, you really have to look
Speaker 2: at stacks and heaps. The stack is a region of
Speaker 2: memory used for temporary execution, like.
Speaker 1: When a program runs a specific function.
Speaker 2: Exactly like an encryption algorithm. It pushes a temporary stack
Speaker 2: frame into memory. This frame holds the local variables the
Speaker 2: parameters being passed in the return address. When the function
Speaker 2: finishes its job, that frame is popped off the stack.
Speaker 1: But popping it off doesn't actually erase the data, does it.
Speaker 1: It just tells the system, Hey, this space is available
Speaker 1: to be overwritten later.
Speaker 2: Exactly the data is still physically there. The ghost of
Speaker 2: the function is still sitting in RAM.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If you find a remnant stack frame in a
Speaker 2: memory dump, you might extract the exact encryption key the
Speaker 2: malware passed to a function milliseconds before the RAM was captured.
Speaker 1: Or maybe like pull out the raw, unencrypted text of
Speaker 1: a chat log that was hitting on the stack just
Speaker 1: before the malwar encrypted it to send it out over
Speaker 1: the network.
Speaker 3: You absolutely could.
Speaker 2: You are literally catching the malware with its pants down,
Speaker 2: right in the middle of a thought process.
Speaker 1: But stacks are temporary. What if the malware needs long
Speaker 1: term storage, Say it's scraping a massive database of user
Speaker 1: credentials and needs to hold them in memory for hours
Speaker 1: before exultrating them.
Speaker 2: That is where the heap comes in. Unlike the stack,
Speaker 2: which is highly structured and temporary, the heap is used
Speaker 2: for dynamic long term memory allocation. When a program needs
Speaker 2: a massive chunk of memory to store unpredictable amounts of data,
Speaker 2: like a growing list of stolen passwords, it asks the
Speaker 2: OS to carve out a space in the heap.
Speaker 3: The heap is messy, it's really fragmented, but it stays there.
Speaker 2: But the data stays there persistently, yes, until the program
Speaker 2: explicitly tells the OS to free it.
Speaker 1: So as an investigator, I'm scouring the heap for those
Speaker 1: large payloads. But whether I'm looking at the stack or
Speaker 1: the heap, I still need context. Like if I find
Speaker 1: an IP address floating in memory, how do I know
Speaker 1: if it's a malicious connection or just the user checking
Speaker 1: their email?
Speaker 2: That brings us to the final critical structure records or
Speaker 2: what developers call C structs. The core of most operating
Speaker 2: systems is written in the C programming language.
Speaker 1: Okay, C strucks right. In C.
Speaker 2: A struct is a way to group different types of
Speaker 2: data together under one logical umbrella. The perfect example is
Speaker 2: a network connection struck.
Speaker 1: So instead of a messy pile of data, it's highly organized,
Speaker 1: like a perfectly formatted ID card. For every single network
Speaker 1: connection precisely.
Speaker 2: This single IV card record might hold a two byte
Speaker 2: integer for an identification number, another two byte integer for
Speaker 2: the remote port, a four byte value for the IP address,
Speaker 2: and a thirty two character array for the remote host name.
Speaker 1: And because it's so structured.
Speaker 2: Because the C programming language strictly defines the exact size
Speaker 2: and order of these fields, forensic tools like Volatility know
Speaker 2: exactly how to parse them.
Speaker 1: It just takes all the guesswork out completely.
Speaker 2: If the tool finds the base address of a network
Speaker 2: connection strucked in the RAM, it knows that exactly two
Speaker 2: bytes later is the port, and exactly four bytes later
Speaker 2: is the IP address.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: By iterating through these formatted records, investigators can piece together
Speaker 2: the full context of the intrusion. You aren't just guessing
Speaker 2: based on fragmented network logs. You are seeing the absolute
Speaker 2: ground truth of who the malware was communicating with as
Speaker 2: the operating system recorded it.
Speaker 1: It's like finding the attacker's little black book just sitting
Speaker 1: on the desk. This has been such a wild journey.
Speaker 1: I mean, we started by realizing that the physical constraints
Speaker 1: of hardware like that DMA backdoor allow attackers and defenders
Speaker 1: alike to bypass security and access the raw silicon of RAM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we navigated the grand illusion of virtual memory,
Speaker 1: seeing how the MMU translates fake addresses into physical realities.
Speaker 1: We exposed how rootkits like shadow Walker desynchronized the CPU's
Speaker 1: view of memory to hide in plain sight, right.
Speaker 3: The invisibility cloak exactly.
Speaker 1: And finally we dug through the ledgers of bit maps,
Speaker 1: the ghosts of stacks, the mezi hordes of heaps, and
Speaker 1: the structured id cards of sea strucks to pull out
Speaker 1: the exact passwords and connections the malware thought were told safe.
Speaker 2: It really is an entire universe of forensic evidence, completely
Speaker 2: invisible to the naked eye, and it all relies entirely
Speaker 2: on the fragile state of electrical capacitors keeping those ones
Speaker 2: and zeros.
Speaker 1: Alive, which actually brings us right back to where we
Speaker 1: started today. The instinct to pull the plug. We established
Speaker 1: at the very beginning that volatile RAM loses its data
Speaker 1: when the power is cut. If the power goes, the
Speaker 1: capacitors grain, the memory is wipe, the evidence is gone.
Speaker 3: Yep, it all disappears.
Speaker 1: But there's a tiny caveat in the source material that
Speaker 1: raises an incredible, honestly chilling question. Does that electrical charge
Speaker 1: decay instantly?
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating vulnerability. The forensics community refers to it
Speaker 2: as a cold.
Speaker 1: Boot attack, right because physics dictates how fast those capacitors discharge.
Speaker 1: So what happens if a physical attacker breaks into an office,
Speaker 1: rips the RAM chips out of a running server's motherboard
Speaker 1: and drastically drops their temperature, say by spraying the physical
Speaker 1: chips with inverted candare or dumping liquid nitrogen on them.
Speaker 2: The physics change entirely. When you super cool the silicon,
Speaker 2: the decay of the electrical charge slows down dramatically.
Speaker 1: Could the data like your passwords, your network logs, the
Speaker 1: master encryption keys to your hard drive? Could they stay
Speaker 1: frozen in time? Could those ones and zeros survive in
Speaker 1: those chilled chips just long enough for the attacker to
Speaker 1: plug them into a different machine and steal everything even
Speaker 1: after the power was cut.
Speaker 2: It turns out, if you know the physics, the crime
Speaker 2: scene might just survive the blackout.
Speaker 1: It is definitely something to ponder the next time you
Speaker 1: look at your computer desperately wanting to reach around back
Speaker 1: and kill the power. Yeah, a chilling thought, literally until
Speaker 1: next time. For you, keep diving deep.