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Flash drive. There's a number of flash drives that autoexecute when inserted into a computer. These are a known vector for software infections.

As far as I know, ram doesn't generally hold memory after it's been powered down. Ram sticks don't make sense as a vector for a virus as far as I can tell.

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RAM doesn't hold memory very long after it's been powered down, but be aware that it doesn't forget everything immediately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack

What if you were to create RAM sticks with a small amount of flash and a controller onboard, and then swap these with generic RAM sticks?

That would require direct physical access, and if you had that there's a lot of much easier ways to root a box.

You could put data on there, sure, but typically the OS won't try to execute garbage data left over from a previous boot - it'll just get overwritten. I suppose you could have it swap out data after boot, but there are easier ways when you have physical access.

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