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Comment by bitJericho | Hacker News Reader

I'd be shocked and amazed if someone broke into my locked computer. Someone could break into my house with something as simple as a rock, though.

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If an adversary has physical access to a computer, they can get basically anything. In unencrypted scenarios they can pull out drives and mount them in their own run time (OS). If the device is also running then coldboot attacks can allow the encryption to be attacked.

Finally, there is the eventual cracking of many encryption algorithms via cryptanalysis and moores law.

[1]: Answer about moore's law effects on bits of security http://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/1828 [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack

My computer is encrypted. It's far more complicated to break into my computer than to use a rock against a window.

Cold Boot is hard to implement, and can be mitigated by putting the 16kb of key memory on the L2/L3 cache or some other piece of memory that instantly clears on power off.

With FDE and memory encryption, how else can you get pass this?

Thing is, you would know if someone broke into your house with a rock through the window. Breaking into your computer, or breaking the encryption of your data on some server, can be done without nobody noticing for years.

Securing your data is a completely different problem, and a much more difficult one, than securing your house.

Chances are your computer has already been compromised. Your house? Probably not.

If it was compromised already it's because it's safer for the hacker to do so than to break my window and go in my house. Safer does not equal easier.

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