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That only helps if you assume the laptop is fully powered off when it is stolen. If it's on or merely in "sleep" mode, disk encryption doesn't help.First, I said FDE and hardware security chips like Apple's T2 and mentioned stuff being soldered on and HSM backed encrypted memory. Yes, simple FDE and standard PCs can be subject to physical memory swaps and the like, but that becomes vastly more complicated and difficult with devices that use significant hardware security. This is no different then a modern iPhone, where merely having physical possession, even with the phone not powered off, doesn't mean it's trivial to access the data.
Second, you're engaging in the security fallacy of inventing theoretical attacks without considering economic cost or whether they pass the weakest point test in the threat model. The sort of scenario you've come up with is not that simple and not the sort of thing some random crook is likely to do, which is how this thread was started. But if you're dealing with a targeted physical attack by an actor with significant expertise and resources, there are far more trivial weaker points to go for. For example, they could just stick a pinhole camera looking down at your desk (or anywhere else you frequent with your notebook) and just record your password and avoid the whole mess. None of this has anything to do with password managers.
>What can never be?
Try reading the conversation? I responded to "Probably not a common scenario right now", which implies that it could someday become a common scenario. Ie., an attack that could be scalable. But physical end point attacks are inherently not scalable, just like anything else that requires actual boots on the ground. Resource cost is the framework of all security.
>The stealing doesn't need to be automated, just the attack on the password manager itself. A program anyone can download and run on a stolen laptop to extract the password database would be sufficient.
If the stealing isn't automated then it's not scalable and it's an entirely different scenario. And this makes zero sense anyway. You can't just download and run anything on a stolen quality notebook without breaking it's physical security first, which is increasingly non-trivial. The password manager database has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.