I ran into an interesting and scary article “Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encrytion Keys” by J. Alex Halderman, Seth D. Schoen, Nadia Heninger, William Clarkson, William Paul, Joseph A. Calandrino, Ariel J. Feldman, Jacob Appelbaum, and Edward W. Felten.  They’ve found a way to break your security, not by attacking your cryptography key, but by freezing your computer.  I won’t try to explain how it works, you can read the article or what my friend Lance Cottrell has to say about it in his blog, The Privacy Blog.  Lance’s bottom line (and one I agree with) is simple:  turn the machine OFF, don’t put it into Sleep mode.

BTW: If you are wondering why I’m blogging about this on a personal security blog, the answer is actually simple:  your private information is the key to your personal security.  Protect it at all times.