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    I'm a grad student, and I don't understand why the paper you linked to shows that I need to be more paranoid. Can you please explain? Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 20:03
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    @Kevin probably my bad; that paper has been described as a "research project" and for some reason my brain mis-remembered that as being a grad student project. Looking twice at the authors, I think my brain was wrong. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if CS/EE graduate programs were the sort of place where nifty ideas for grabbing memory crop up and get tested... Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 20:42
  • Also, IIRC firewire devices have free access to host memory, and there's even existing software available that'll get you in to many OS versions, so definitely within reach for CS/EE students. Not sure if eg. newer hardware has anything to mitigate this, for example something like IOMMU between firewire DMA and host memory. Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 21:02
  • I see your point about not stepping from my laptop at all if I'm really paranoid... as mentioned below, there is always the possibility that the boot manager will be tampered with to get my password... That leads me to believe that the best way would be to carry the boot USB drive always with me and keep turning my PC off if I was really paranoid. Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 15:54