Questions tagged [physical]
The use of physical measures (such as locks and tamper-proofing) or policies (such as Clean Desk) in order to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.
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What advantage do hardware tamper-resistance provide in HSM?
Roughly speaking HSM is supposed to ingest or generate some secret material (key) and then never export them through the command interface. The keys can only be used according to their configured ...
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Dropbox-resistant wired IP camera system
How can I defend against a dropbox in an IP-based, wired camera system?
I want to install security cameras at my house. One of the locations (on the street-facing side) isn't especially secure (hence ...
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What are the preferred ways to exchange public keys physically?
Suppose I have the privilege to being able to physically meet a person that I want to communicate with beforehand. Suppose the person and I have minimal trust --- it could be the first time we get to ...
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Since JTAG can be authenticated and encrypted, which key is used? I read that Secure Boot is used, but what is the key?
Since JTAG can be authenticated and encrypted, which key is used? I read that Secure Boot is used, but what is the key? Me, owner of this laptop, how can I know the key to use to access my own laptop ...
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Laptop Repair vs. Evil Maid
Suppose you need a laptop repair, so you bring it to
A big box store where you have some sort of coverage (who will have the computer for 2-3 weeks)
A small chain of repair shops
a small independent ...
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Mitigating vulnerabilities in audio libraries that cause physical damage
As I pointed out here in February 2022, people who gained brief direct or remote access to a machine or introduce malicious code or code vulnerable to this can change the volume step or other things ...
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Can fingerprint readers be trusted?
I've recently obtained a new notebook, specifically a Thinkpad. Now I found out that it has a fingerprint reader integrated into the power button. I am skeptical about biometrics as a security ...
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Rowhammer mitigations in current hardware and software
I've been looking into rowhammer attacks and mitigations and there are two (what seem to be) mitigations that I've seen that are actually implemented in currently available hardware and software, but ...
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What can an attacker do with physical access to a Linux server?
I have physical access to a Linux computer (Ubuntu 20.04). My colleague asked me what an attacker could do if he had physical access to this computer?
I would like to know if, by default (after a ...
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Why did they stop adding physical "write protect" mechanism?
Floppy disks used to have a physical means of preventing writing to them. No software could bypass that, no matter what. It had to be flicked physically and manually by a human being.
Modern SD cards ...
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As a private individual, cleanly destroy a large number of paper documents. Are there alternatives to the consumer shredder?
I need to safely dispose of about 30 federal folders. That means 95% of the documents will be shredded and the rest stored. I bought a small shredder for private people (professional shredders are too ...
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What is the name of the box that hackers connect to a router in order to spy on all your traffic?
I watched a documentary where hackers entered a victim's house by pretending to be from the ISP and then connected a box to a router in order to spy on all of the victim's traffic. Later, the hackers ...
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What type of attacks can be carried against an OS with FDE, if we assume OS and FDE are implemented correctly?
The question is mainly stated in the title. I was wondering what kind of attacks can be launched on such a setup, where someone has access to a running OS with locked screen (needs password for the ...
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Does Windows 10 read/run/care about USB devices plugged in "Lock Screen" mode?
Whenever I leave my computer for the bathroom or anything inside the living space, I press WinKey + L to enter the "Lock Screen" mode. (If I go outside, I turn it off completely.)
Let's say ...
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Detecting BIOS changes on PC
I've seen this question: Is it possible to determine if the BIOS has been modified between two points in time?
On my Linux PC, I've made a script that checks the MD5 hash of the boot partition to ...
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