Cold Boot Memory Acquisition: An Investigation into Memory Freezing and Data Retention Claims

A number of claims have been made regarding cold boot memory acquisition techniques. There are numerous potential applications for these techniques should they be shown to be reliable and suitable for use in the field. An investigation into these techniques has been conducted. The results of conducted experiments do not show that cold boot memory acquisition is viable for use in the field in its current state, however future research may change this. In addition to this there are a number of possible countermeasures that should be considered and carefully evaluated before live memory acquisition methods are employed.