this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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At that point you relying on the fact that nothing running in your machine at boot can be compromised - after all, everything running on your machine has access to your unencrypted data.
If you don’t automatically unlock using the TPM, an attacker only has access to encrypted data.
Very true, which is why it's important to run as few services and have a locked down firewall. Maintaining a minimal attack surface is everything.
If the attack involves stealing the machine it has been demonstrated that you can ice the ram and swap it into another machine without data loss, recover the keys, and access the drive.
If we're talking apt adversaries it's also possible to just build a ram sniffer
While true, I think most people's concern is that their laptop is stolen and along with it all the access details for their email, online banking and so on.
If you're doing things that mean you're going to be the target of people with the knowledge, time, and technology to freeze the RAM and attempt to recover the data, you're presumably already well aware of those (and other) dangers anyway.
Those people need to learn how to fend of these attacks somewhere, too.
I guess my point was that if you're going to use FDE and unlock the disk without a password, don't bother hardening against attacks that involve stealing the whole machine.
Agreed that this is almost fiction level paranoia.