Post by Warp

Posted: 11/10/2008 6:20 PM

Post subject: Clipboard saved after reboot?

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Highness

Player (70)

Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden

Hello people. I was just wondering.. I downloaded and installed the latest livecd of kubuntu today. I rebooted the computer and booted the livecd (which I'm on right now). After a while I decided to paste a thing that I (thought I) had in my clipboard. I was kind of puzzled when the pasted text was something I had in my windows clipboard before burning and rebooting a couple of hours ago. Can anyone try to explain why and how that happend? As far as I know the clipboard should be flushed after a reboot, and now I'm even in a different OS, so for me it's a double WTF? =) Cheers for answers and hypotheses. ;)

Posted: 11/10/2008 10:15 PM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

Data in the clipboard is actually stored in the central power capacitors of your computer. Since these capacitors can hold their charge for a long time after the computer has been turned off, the contents of your clipboard can be retrieved even after a reboot or after you have turned off your computer. To completely wipe out the clipboard you have to keep your computer shut down long enough for these capacitors to lose all their charge. This should be something from a few days to several weeks, depending on your computer model.

Posted: 11/10/2008 11:45 PM

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Derakon

Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960

Um...I don't know what you're talking about with "central power capacitors"; perhaps you are joking? The clipboard is stored in RAM, which is, as a general rule, wiped when you boot up; certainly whatever is there from the old boot can't be trusted so the "is there something in the clipboard" bit should be set to 0 on startup. For that matter, it's different RAM for different OSes.

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Posted: 11/11/2008 12:04 AM

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mmbossman

Experienced player (822)

Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong

I believe Warp meant the flux capacitor, but it will only save your clipboard when powered by 1.21 Gigawatts of electricity.

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Posted: 11/11/2008 12:06 AM

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Apo123

Joined: 5/17/2008
Posts: 212
Location: Virginia

mmbossman wrote:

I believe Warp meant the flux capacitor, but it will only save your clipboard when powered by 1.21 Gigawatts of electricity.

So that's how it saves the clipboard text? It goes back in time, grabs the text, comes back to the present, and writes it to the screen? That explains a lot.

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Posted: 11/11/2008 1:17 AM

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Ramzi

Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459

mmbossman wrote:

I believe Warp meant the flux capacitor, but it will only save your clipboard when powered by 1.21 Gigawatts of electricity.

You mean electrocity.

Posted: 11/11/2008 7:07 AM

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Bisqwit

Editor, Active player (296)

Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth

Ramzi wrote:

You mean electrocity.

Is that somewhere near Radiocity, the place that seems to be highly popular among raytracers? Now, can anyone actually try to answer mr. Highness's question?

Posted: 11/11/2008 8:45 AM

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Raiscan

Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom

What was the text?

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Posted: 11/11/2008 8:47 AM

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Twelvepack

Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO

also, its "Jigga watts"

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Posted: 11/11/2008 4:38 PM

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YtterbiJum

Active player (332)

Joined: 11/25/2004
Posts: 75

Maybe the text was so important that Highness copied it with both Windows and Ubuntu, but only remembered it with Windows. Or maybe it's this.

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Posted: 11/12/2008 2:27 AM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

YtterbiJum wrote:

Maybe the text was so important that Highness copied it with both Windows and Ubuntu, but only remembered it with Windows.

This is my guess as well, as it is pretty much a given that Windows and Ubuntu wouldn't store the clipboard in the same section of RAM.

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Posted: 11/12/2008 2:30 AM

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GuidMorrow

Joined: 4/30/2008
Posts: 89
Location: Northeast Kansas USA, GMT -06:00

You can't do that! You've created a time paradox! ... If you really want your clipboard cleaned when you start Windows, download CCleaner and have it run at startup.

Posted: 11/12/2008 2:36 AM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

Uh, GuidMorrow, the clipboard is temporary. It's lost between reboots. You don't need to "erase" it at startup. (You could even just open a text editor and copy a space or something...)

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Posted: 11/12/2008 6:47 AM

Post subject: Re: Clipboard saved after reboot?

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OmnipotentEntity

He/Him

Player (36)

Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2623

Highness wrote:

Hello people. I was just wondering.. I downloaded and installed the latest livecd of kubuntu today. I rebooted the computer and booted the livecd (which I'm on right now). After a while I decided to paste a thing that I (thought I) had in my clipboard. I was kind of puzzled when the pasted text was something I had in my windows clipboard before burning and rebooting a couple of hours ago. Can anyone try to explain why and how that happend? As far as I know the clipboard should be flushed after a reboot, and now I'm even in a different OS, so for me it's a double WTF? =) Cheers for answers and hypotheses. ;)

Actually, the contents of RAM are not completely cleared after a reboot. A recent news article somewhere (I don't remember where) said that researchers were able to pull out information several hours after the computer was powered off from the RAM. What I do find very strange is why would it be pulling information from the exact same location in RAM? And why there isn't a check to make sure that the information was initialized. That I don't know. Remember, just because RAM is volatile memory doesn't mean that the information in there goes poof immediately. And you never really had your computer actually powered off, just rebooted.

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Posted: 11/12/2008 7:04 AM

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Twelvepack

Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO

Was that the article that discussed recovering cryptographic key information from RAM once the computer was recently powered off, by cooling the RAM using liquid nitrogen to prevent the information from degrading? I thought the idea seemed far fetched, but I have no real information for that perception, my understanding of how RAM works on a molecular level is limited to say the least.

Has never colored a dinosaur.

Posted: 11/12/2008 8:35 AM

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arflech

He/Him

Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120

^Yeah, I think it was the one about a far-fetched manner to hack into a voting machine.

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Posted: 11/12/2008 10:33 PM

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YtterbiJum

Active player (332)

Joined: 11/25/2004
Posts: 75

I believe you are refering to a Cold boot attack. Also, the idea of Windows and any GTK- or KDE- or X- or whatever-based system sharing the same RAM for clipboard use is a moot point anyway, since the different operating systems and windowing environments use different formats for their clipboards. (The exception being Cygwin-X, which uses the Windows clipboard.)

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Posted: 11/13/2008 9:08 AM

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Highness

Player (70)

Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden

Funny and interesting answers so far. Keep em* coming. Cheers.