this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
112 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37757 readers
550 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Sounds more like a very small security risk, to me. For most people if someone steals their laptop it doesn't really matter what kind of RAM is in it.
If you're in some kind of high-security role then use a laptop with volatile RAM instead. Non-volatile will probably be more expensive than the old stuff for quite a while so it's not going anywhere.
Maybe, it depends how it works.
Memory is often unencrypted and/or contains encryption keys. Many programs rely on the assumption that it's cleared on powerdown for security.
Depending on how this memory enters the long term state it seems that a lot of legacy software might become vulnerable to a really simple attack.
Pulling the plug might no longer be something that forces someone to engage in rubber hose analysis.
In a world with ULTRARAM those programs will need to be rewritten to operate under new assumptions.
Sure of course of course but umm have you seen software?
There are still windows xp computers on the internet.
It's not insurmountable, and of course I have no idea if/how this will roll out.
Just it seems to mess with a rather deep assumption we have about how computers operate when we develop software and threat models.
The better example is that there are still programs compiled in Win 95 running here and there if I'm correct.
Sure, but anyone who's still running WindowsXP on their laptop wants to suffer.
As always, the security-minded will be able to secure their devices and everyone else will not care until it bites them. ULTRARAM isn't revolutionary in that regard.