Here is a question.
In the same way that ram is 'volatile' and the next time it is switched on it erases whatever information was stored there, the last time.
Is the same true for a cpu? Does the processor of a computer actually store any information? or does it just act as a gateway?
Would there be any point in analysing the CPU alone of a machine for evidence of files transferred etc…
Thanks
i would say no. if you are doing live analysis then you look at things like the ram etc, dump everything to file. the only thing i could think of would be the cpu cache itself… however, it is just a processor. i don't think it would retain much information as it would effect performance, they are designed for stream-line performance. farmerdude would be a good person to answer this question though he knows lots about live analysis.
> In the same way that ram is 'volatile' and the next time it is switched on it
> erases whatever information was stored there, the last time.
Really? Who says? There's research being done now that suggests that this isn't the case, and so far, no one has provided much information to the contrary to say that yes, BIOS wipes the contents of RAM to all <enter character of choice here>s.
> Does the processor of a computer actually store any information?
Look at the architecture of a CPU…take the Intel chips. Logically, there's a pipeline that the instructions progress through…earlier versions would convert CISC instruction sets to RISC commands and run them through the pipeline, acting on them. The quanta are so small, though, that it's highly unlikely that you'd get any usable information, even if you could pull the contents of the those gates.
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…earlier versions would convert CISC instruction sets to RISC commands and run them through the pipeline, acting on them.
When were intel (as in x86 which are the majority of what we see) chips ever RISC processors? they have always been CISC.
> When were intel (as in x86 which are the majority of what we see) chips ever RISC processors? they have always been CISC.
I didn't say they were RISC processors. I said that the CISC instructions were converted to RISC commands (maybe I should have said "RISC-like"). I took a processor design course in grad school and we studied the internal workings of the popular processors at the time.
Take a look at this
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Excerpted "The Pentium Pro was the first mainstream CPU to radically change how it executes instructions, by translating them into RISC-like microinstructions and executing these on a highly advanced internal core."
Hope that helps.