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Category — Intel SGX
Researchers Break Intel SGX With New 'SmashEx' CPU Attack Technique

Researchers Break Intel SGX With New 'SmashEx' CPU Attack Technique

Oct 20, 2021
A newly disclosed vulnerability affecting Intel processors could be abused by an adversary to gain access to sensitive information stored within enclaves and even run arbitrary code on vulnerable systems. The vulnerability ( CVE-2021-0186 , CVSS score: 8.2) was discovered by a group of academics from ETH Zurich, the National University of Singapore, and the Chinese National University of Defense Technology in early May 2021, who used it to stage a confidential data disclosure attack called " SmashEx " that can corrupt private data housed in the enclave and break its integrity. Introduced with Intel's Skylake processors, SGX (short for Software Guard eXtensions) allows developers to run selected application modules in a completely isolated secure compartment of memory, called an enclave or a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which is designed to be protected from processes running at higher privilege levels like the operating system. SGX ensures that data is secure ...
New PlunderVolt Attack Targets Intel SGX Enclaves by Tweaking CPU Voltage

New PlunderVolt Attack Targets Intel SGX Enclaves by Tweaking CPU Voltage

Dec 11, 2019
A team of cybersecurity researchers demonstrated a novel yet another technique to hijack Intel SGX, a hardware-isolated trusted space on modern Intel CPUs that encrypts extremely sensitive data to shield it from attackers even when a system gets compromised. Dubbed Plundervolt and tracked as CVE-2019-11157, the attack relies on the fact that modern processors allow frequency and voltage to be adjusted when needed, which, according to researchers, can be modified in a controlled way to induce errors in the memory by flipping bits. Bit flip is a phenomenon widely known for the Rowhammer attack wherein attackers hijack vulnerable memory cells by changing their value from 1 to a 0, or vice versa—all by tweaking the electrical charge of neighboring memory cells. However, since the Software Guard Extensions (SGX) enclave memory is encrypted, the Plundervolt attack leverages the same idea of flipping bits by injecting faults in the CPU before they are written to the memory. Plundervo...
Protecting Your Software Supply Chain: Assessing the Risks Before Deployment

Protecting Your Software Supply Chain: Assessing the Risks Before Deployment

Feb 11, 2025Software Security / Threat Intelligence
Imagine you're considering a new car for your family. Before making a purchase, you evaluate its safety ratings, fuel efficiency, and reliability. You might even take it for a test drive to ensure it meets your needs. The same approach should be applied to software and hardware products before integrating them into an organization's environment. Just as you wouldn't buy a car without knowing its safety features, you shouldn't deploy software without understanding the risks it introduces. The Rising Threat of Supply Chain Attacks Cybercriminals have recognized that instead of attacking an organization head-on, they can infiltrate through the software supply chain—like slipping counterfeit parts into an assembly line. According to the 2024 Sonatype State of the Software Supply Chain report , attackers are infiltrating open-source ecosystems at an alarming rate, with over 512,847 malicious packages detected last year alone—a 156% increase from the previous year. Traditional sec...
Researchers Implant "Protected" Malware On Intel SGX Enclaves

Researchers Implant "Protected" Malware On Intel SGX Enclaves

Feb 13, 2019
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a way to hide malicious code in Intel SGX enclaves, a hardware-based memory encryption feature in modern processors that isolates sensitive code and data to protect it from disclosure or modification. In other words, the technique allows attackers to implant malware code in a secure memory that uses protection features of SGX which are otherwise designed to protect important data from prying eyes or from being tampered, even on a compromised system. Introduced with Intel's Skylake processors, SGX (Software Guard Extensions) allows developers to run selected application modules in a completely isolated secure region of memory, called enclaves, which are designed to be protected from processes running at higher privilege levels like the operating system, kernel, BIOS, SMM, hypervisor, etc. However, a team of researchers, some of whom were behind the discovery of the Spectre-Meltdown CPU flaws , managed to bypass this protection and g...
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