Protecting RAM

Attacks on RAM are one of the arguments to better protect data in use.

There are various security attacks on RAM. One is malware that can scrape memory e.g. for plaintext credit card numbers (once read into RAM prior to encryption).  Modern systems aim to encrypt data as early as possible in the processing pipeline.

Privileged operators (e.g. cloud admins) can peek into RAM. This is why confidential VMs isolate memory to hide data-in-use from cloud providers. 

DMA devices such as Thunderbolt peripherals can read system memory (and hence potentially sensitive data, from RAM). Modern operating systems restrict "hot-plug" DMA access.

Note: this list of compromise attacks is non-exhaustive. This is a big field of operations.

Managed HSM as a secure key storage option in Azure

Managed HSM (Hardware Security Module) is when you need the highest level of key protection in Azure. 

FIPS 140-3 Level 3 hardware is utilised.  

These are stringent security requirements set by NIST. They include: physical security through hardened enclosure and tamper-evident seals and active tamper-detection. The tamper detection includes detection of physical intrusion, temperature and voltage anomalies.

Understanding Ampere Hours and Milliampere Hours (mAh) in Battery Technology

The ampere-hour or Amp hour is a unit of electrical charge (denoted Ah).  The milli-ampere hour (abbreviated mAh) is one thousandth of an ampere-hour. 

1 Ah is equal to 3,600 coulombs so 1 mAh is equal to 3.6 coulombs. The coulomb is the SI unit of electrical charge ("quantity of electricity"). Coulombs are another "view" on the same data.

A coulomb the charge transferred by a constant electric current of 1 ampere in 1 second.

Is your Windows Laptop Working or Sleeping - G0 or G1?

Welcome to the World of the Hardware Software Interface on Windows. And how did we get here? How else, except through Device Manager.

Investigating your PC's Power Management Functions Via Device Manager

Anyone who has pulled up Device Manager on a laptop computer running Windows 98 or above, will have seen references to ACPI (Advanced Configuration Power Interface) which is the successor to APM. An example entry in Device Manager would be Computer defined as "ACPI x64 based PC".

The ACPI Specification and Involvement of Various Vendors

ACPI is a thousand page specification that allows Windows to communicate with the BIOS and instruct the BIOS to power down peripherals (the details of the specification are mainly of interest to Independent Hardware Vendors, or IHVs). 

ACPI is a joint effort between Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Toshiba, and BIOS entrepreneur Phoenix Technologies Incorporated.

Four Basic States of a Component as Defined by ACPI

Working (G0), Sleeping (G1), Soft Off (G2) and Mechanical Off (G3). Within these global states are various sleep states.

Related Jargon like OSPM and AML

ACPI enables OSPM (Operating System-directed configuration and Power Management). AML is the machine language for ACPI.

The Riddle of the RAM - How Much RAM For Windows? Is 8GB Not Enough?

Let's say a starter computer comes with 8GB RAM, and a more high-end gaming PC comes with 16GB RAM. Windows 8 supports up to 128GB RAM. The more RAM you have, the less you rely on "Virtual Memory"- the magic utilization of hard disk which allows several "heavy memory" applications to run in memory at the same time. "Virtual Memory" is usually implemented as a file, such as pagefile.sys or swapfile.sys.

Storage Technology for the Windows Hacker

Programmers have to be hardware geniuses too these days.

If your inner hardware genius needs refreshing here are some of the common terms you will come across when dealing with storage solutions. If you are in charge of hypervisor environments or cloud administration you will certainly need to know these terms as a prerequisite to any technical chats you may have with hardware vendors.

SCSI - SMALL COMPUTER System Interface (sku-zee) - the hard part to remember is the SMALL COMPUTER part of the acronym!

It is basically a set of standards to physically connect peripherals with computers. It's important to know this since many new standards are derived from SCSI.

SCSI was actually derived from another standard known as SASI where SA was "Shugart Associates", a floppy disk drive manufacturer from the 1970s).

SASI was developed around 1978 to provide a communication interface between the low level interface of a hard disk drive and a computer.

The original SCSI standard was published by ANSI in 1986.SCSI-2 was published in 1990.

The Giga in Gigabyte and Gigahertz

From the Greek meaning Giant

Giga comes from the Greek word meaning "giant".

A Billion, A Thousand Million, or Ten to the Power Nine

It's a prefix in the metric system representing a "thousand million" or more colloquially, a "billion", or ten to the power nine, or ten to the power ten minus one. It was used in the film Back to the Future ("Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine..out of a Delorean?").

The Giga in CPU Clock Rates

Say, a CPU has a clock rate of 2 GHz. It means it has a clock rate of 2 billion Hertz. This is the "frequency" of the oscillator crystal (crystal oscillators produce sine wave signals with very precise frequency).

The Giga in Computer Speed

One Gigaflop is one billion floating point operations a second.

What's next after Giga?

After Giga, the next notch is Tera. A tera is ten to the power twelve or a million million a.k.a. a trillion. It has the symbol T. It is derived from the Greek teras meaning "monster".