DMA poses threat to BitLocker encryption

DMA is Direct Memory Access,  which allows IEEE 1394 (a.k.a. Firewire) devices connected to your computer to bypass the CPU in reading from and writing to system memory. The purpose of this is to take a load off the processor and avoid slowing its performance. The problem is that it can pose a security threat because an attacker can exploit it to steal a BitLocker encryption key and use it to decrypt the volume you thought was protected. Ouch! Paul Robichaux writes about this in his latest blog post, and directs you to the Microsoft KB article that explains how to turn off the DMA driver to protect against this threat. Read it here:

http://www.robichaux.net/blog/2011/03/1394-dma-and-bitlocker.php

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