I've got a bunch of RAM modules from upgrading several machines, I'm aware with HDDs / SSDs etc in that they should be securely wiped or destroyed, but what is the best practice with RAM?
Can it be securely wiped and resold or should it be destroyed?
1 Answer
Can it be securely wiped and resold or should it be destroyed?
You can just remove the RAM and resell it.
If you remove your RAM chips and put them in a drawer for a few days it is very unlikely that anyone will be able to recover any information for them (assuming that they would be interested enough to even try).
Extensive research shows that data is recoverable from RAM only under extreme conditions.
Under normal temperature conditions RAM will retain it's information for a short time (up to 35 seconds) when power is removed:
we found that the dimensions of the decay curves varied considerably between machines, with the fastest exhibiting complete data loss in approximately 2.5 seconds and the slowest taking an average of 35 seconds.
If the RAM is removed (or powered off) and cooled using liquid nitrogen then the the time is much longer (hours or even days):
As an extreme test of memory cooling, we performed another experiment using liquid nitrogen as an additional cooling agent. We first cooled the memory module of Machine A to 50◦C using the “canned air” product.
We then cut power to the machine, and quickly removed the DRAM module and placed it in a canister of liquid nitrogen. We kept the memory module submerged in the liquid nitrogen for 60 minutes, then returned it to the machine. We measured only 14,000 bit errors within a 1 MB test region (0.17% decay).
This suggests that, even in modern memory modules, data may be recoverable for hours or days with sufficient cooling.
Source Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys
