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CacheWarp Attack: New Vulnerability in AMD SEV Exposes Encrypted VMs

CacheWarp Attack: New Vulnerability in AMD SEV Exposes Encrypted VMs

Nov 14, 2023 Hardware Security / Virtualization
A group of academics has disclosed a new "software fault attack" on AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization ( SEV ) technology that could be potentially exploited by threat actors to infiltrate encrypted virtual machines (VMs) and even perform privilege escalation. The attack has been codenamed  CacheWarp  (CVE-2023-20592) by researchers from the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security and the Graz University of Technology. It impacts AMD CPUs supporting all variants of SEV. "For this research, we specifically looked at AMD's newest TEE, AMD SEV-SNP, relying on the experience from previous attacks on Intel's TEE," security researcher Ruiyi Zhang told The Hacker News. "We found the 'INVD' instruction [flush a processor's cache contents] could be abused under the threat model of AMD SEV." SEV, an  extension  to the AMD-V architecture and introduced in 2016, is designed to isolate VMs from the hypervisor by encrypting the me
New Malware Families Found Targeting VMware ESXi Hypervisors

New Malware Families Found Targeting VMware ESXi Hypervisors

Sep 30, 2022
Threat actors have been found deploying never-before-seen post-compromise implants in VMware's virtualization software to seize control of infected systems and evade detection. Google's Mandiant threat intelligence division referred to it as a "novel malware ecosystem" that impacts VMware ESXi, Linux vCenter servers, and Windows virtual machines, allowing attackers to maintain persistent access to the  hypervisor  as well as execute arbitrary commands. The  hyperjacking attacks , per the cybersecurity vendor, involved the use of malicious vSphere Installation Bundles ( VIBs ) to sneak in two implants, dubbed VIRTUALPITA and VIRTUALPIE, on the ESXi hypervisors. "It is important to highlight that this is not an external remote code execution vulnerability; the attacker needs admin-level privileges to the ESXi hypervisor before they can deploy malware," Mandiant researchers Alexander Marvi, Jeremy Koppen, Tufail Ahmed, and Jonathan Lepore said in an exhaus
How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

Mar 21, 2024SaaS Security / Endpoint Security
In today's digital-first business environment dominated by SaaS applications, organizations increasingly depend on third-party vendors for essential cloud services and software solutions. As more vendors and services are added to the mix, the complexity and potential vulnerabilities within the  SaaS supply chain  snowball quickly. That's why effective vendor risk management (VRM) is a critical strategy in identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to protect organizational assets and data integrity. Meanwhile, common approaches to vendor risk assessments are too slow and static for the modern world of SaaS. Most organizations have simply adapted their legacy evaluation techniques for on-premise software to apply to SaaS providers. This not only creates massive bottlenecks, but also causes organizations to inadvertently accept far too much risk. To effectively adapt to the realities of modern work, two major aspects need to change: the timeline of initial assessment must shorte
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