https://www.sec.in.tum.de/i20/publications/fridgelock-preventing-data-theft-on-suspended-linux-with-usable-memory-encryption

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 3. FridgeLock: Preventing Data Theft on Suspended Linux with Usable
    Memory Encryption

FridgeLock: Preventing Data Theft on Suspended Linux with Usable
Memory Encryption

To secure mobile devices, such as laptops and smartphones, against
unauthorized physical data access, employing Full Disk Encryption
(FDE) is a popular defense. This technique is effective if the device
is always shut down when unattended. However, devices are often
suspended instead of switched off. This leaves confidential data such
as the FDE key, passphrases and user data in RAM which may be read
out using cold boot, JTAG or DMA attacks. These attacks can be
mitigated by encrypting the main memory during suspend. While this
approach seems promising, it is not implemented on Windows or Linux.
We present FridgeLock to add memory encryption on suspend to Linux.
Our implementation as a Linux Kernel Module (LKM) does not require an
admin to recompile the kernel. Using Dynamic Kernel Module Support
(DKMS) allows for easy and fast deployment on existing Linux systems,
where the distribution provides a prepackaged kernel and kernel
updates. We tested our module on a range of 4.19 to 5.3 kernels and
experienced a low performance impact, sustaining the system's
usability. We hope that our tool leads to a more detailed evaluation
of memory encryption in real world usage scenarios.

FridgeLock: Preventing Data Theft on Suspended Linux with Usable
Memory Encryption

Proceedings of the Tenth ACM Conference on Data and Application
Security and Privacy

Authors:   Fabian Franzen, Manuel Andreas, and Manuel Huber
Year/      2020/3
month:
Booktitle: Proceedings of the Tenth ACM Conference on Data and
           Application Security and Privacy
Fulltext:  fridgelock.pdf

Abstract

To secure mobile devices, such as laptops and smartphones, against
unauthorized physical data access, employing Full Disk Encryption
(FDE) is a popular defense. This technique is effective if the device
is always shut down when unattended. However, devices are often
suspended instead of switched off. This leaves confidential data such
as the FDE key, passphrases and user data in RAM which may be read
out using cold boot, JTAG or DMA attacks. These attacks can be
mitigated by encrypting the main memory during suspend. While this
approach seems promising, it is not implemented on Windows or Linux.
We present FridgeLock to add memory encryption on suspend to Linux.
Our implementation as a Linux Kernel Module (LKM) does not require an
admin to recompile the kernel. Using Dynamic Kernel Module Support
(DKMS) allows for easy and fast deployment on existing Linux systems,
where the distribution provides a prepackaged kernel and kernel
updates. We tested our module on a range of 4.19 to 5.3 kernels and
experienced a low performance impact, sustaining the system's
usability. We hope that our tool leads to a more detailed evaluation
of memory encryption in real world usage scenarios.

Bibtex:

@inproceedings {
author = { Fabian Franzen and Manuel Andreas and Manuel Huber},
title = { FridgeLock: Preventing Data Theft on Suspended Linux with
Usable Memory Encryption },
year = { 2020 },
month = { March },
booktitle = { Proceedings of the Tenth ACM Conference on Data and
Application Security and Privacy },
url = {https://www.sec.in.tum.de/i20/publications/
fridgelock-preventing-data-theft-on-suspended-linux-with-usable-memory-encryption
/@@download/file/fridgelock.pdf}
}
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