Disk encryption software used on many systems can be circumvented using what researchers referred to as "simple non-destructive techniques".
A report from researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Princeton University and Wind River Systems concluded that many current consumer disk encryption programs can be compromised via a computer"s DRam. The problem is that data can remain in stored in memory even after the system is shut down. By cold-booting the system, an attacker could access data from the DRam and retrieve encryption keys.