Related papers: SEV-Step: A Single-Stepping Framework for AMD-SEV

Exceptions are a commodity hardware functionality which is central to multi-tasking OSes as well as event-driven user applications. Normally, the OS assists the user application by lifting the semantics of exceptions received from hardware…

AMD SEV-SNP offers VM-level trusted execution environments (TEEs) to protect the confidentiality and integrity for sensitive cloud workloads from untrusted hypervisor controlled by the cloud provider. AMD introduced a new exception, #VC, to…

Besides Intel's SGX technology, there are long-running discussions on how trusted computing technologies can be used to cloak malware. Past research showed example methods of malicious activities utilising Flicker, Trusted Platform Module,…

In the official whitepaper of Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP), AMD explicitly emphasizes the capability to prevent Trusted Computing Base (TCB) rollback attacks. Cryptographically, this is realized by…

We introduce a new timing side-channel attack on Intel CPU processors. Our Frontal attack exploits timing differences that arise from how the CPU frontend fetches and processes instructions while being interrupted. In particular, we observe…

Attestation is a fundamental building block to establish trust over software systems. When used in conjunction with trusted execution environments, it guarantees that genuine code is executed even when facing strong attackers, paving the…

Cache attacks exploit memory access patterns of cryptographic implementations. Constant-Time implementation techniques have become an indispensable tool in fighting cache timing attacks. These techniques engineer the memory accesses of…

Trusted execution environments (TEEs) offer hardware-assisted means to protect code and data. However, as shown in numerous results over the years, attackers can use side-channels to leak data access patterns and even single-step the code.…

Intel SGX (Software Guard Extension) is a promising TEE (trusted execution environment) technique that can protect programs running in user space from being maliciously accessed by the host operating system. Although it provides hardware…

One reason for not adopting cloud services is the required trust in the cloud provider: As they control the hypervisor, any data processed in the system is accessible to them. Full memory encryption for Virtual Machines (VM) protects…

Confidential virtual machines (CVMs) based on trusted execution environments (TEEs) enable new privacy-preserving solutions. Yet, they leave side-channel leakage outside their threat model, shifting the responsibility of mitigating such…

Hardware-assisted trusted execution environments (TEEs) are critical building blocks of many modern applications. However, they have a one-way isolation model that introduces a semantic gap between a TEE and its outside world. This lack of…

Trusted executions environments (TEEs) such as Intel(R) SGX provide hardware-isolated execution areas in memory, called enclaves. By running only the most trusted application components in the enclave, TEEs enable developers to minimize the…

Protection of data-in-use is a key priority, for which Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology has unarguably emerged as a, possibly the most, promising solution. Multiple server-side TEE offerings have been released over the years,…

One of the most prevalent source of side channel vulnerabilities is the secret-dependent behavior of conditional branches (SDBCB). The state-of-the-art solution relies on Constant-Time Expressions, which require high programming effort and…

Symbolic quick error detection (SQED) has greatly improved efficiency in formal chip verification. However, it has a limitation in detecting single-instruction bugs due to its reliance on the self-consistency property. To address this, we…

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has shifted communication networks towards more adaptable software solutions, but this transition raises new security concerns, particularly in public cloud deployments. While Intel's Software Guard…

Modern CPU architectures offer strong isolation guarantees towards user applications in the form of enclaves. For instance, Intel's threat model for SGX assumes fully trusted enclaves, yet there is an ongoing debate on whether this threat…

Secure Element (SE) in SoC sees an increasing adoption in industry. Many applications in IoT devices are bound to the SE because it provides strong cryptographic functions and physical protection. Though SE-in-SoC provides strong proven…

Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) enables user-level code to create private memory regions called enclaves, whose code and data are protected by the CPU from software and hardware attacks outside the enclaves. Recent work introduces…