Ice Ice Baby - Coppin' RAM With DIY Cryo-Mechanical Robot

Explore the design and construction of a robot capable of extracting RAM contents from modern embedded devices at runtime in this 48-minute conference talk from Recon 2023. Delve into the practical engineering challenges and solutions for adapting traditional cold-boot attacks to non-removable DDR chips commonly found in contemporary embedded systems. Learn how to build your own cryo-mem rig using commercial off-the-shelf parts for under $1000. Discover novel techniques and hardware modifications that enable reliable memory extraction from devices with soldered memory modules and custom memory controllers. Gain insights into overcoming obstacles posed by BGA chips, integrated packages, vertical stackups, and encrypted firmware at rest. Presented by cybersecurity experts Ang Cui, Grant Skipper, and Yuanzhe Wu, this talk offers a comprehensive guide to cryogenic mechanical memory extraction as a means to obtain unencrypted firmware from live RAM, providing a valuable tool for reverse engineering and security analysis of embedded hardware.