Related papers: Cabin: Confining Untrusted Programs within Confide…
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…
Hardware support for trusted execution in modern CPUs enables tenants to shield their data processing workloads in otherwise untrusted cloud environments. Runtime systems for the trusted execution must rely on an interface to the untrusted…
With the alarming rate of security advisories and privacy concerns on connected devices, there is an urgent need for strong isolation guarantees in resource-constrained devices that demand very lightweight solutions. However, the status quo…
AMD SEV is a hardware feature designed for the secure encryption of virtual machines. SEV aims to protect virtual machine memory not only from other malicious guests and physical attackers, but also from a possibly malicious hypervisor.…
System Management Mode (SMM) is the highest-privileged operating mode of x86 and x86-64 processors. Through SMM exploitation, attackers can tamper with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware, disabling the security…
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…
Confidential computing plays an important role in isolating sensitive applications from the vast amount of untrusted code commonly found in the modern cloud. We argue that it can also be leveraged to build safer and more secure…
Virtual switches have become popular among cloud operating systems to interconnect virtual machines in a more flexible manner. However, this paper demonstrates that virtual switches introduce new attack surfaces in cloud setups, whose…
Hardware-enclaves that target complex CPU designs compromise both security and performance. Programs have little control over micro-architecture, which leads to side-channel leaks, and then have to be transformed to have worst-case control-…
While there exist many isolation mechanisms that are available to cloud service providers, including virtual machines, containers, etc., the problem of side-channel increases in importance as a remaining security vulnerability, particularly…
Trying to address the security challenges of a cloud-centric software deployment paradigm, silicon and cloud vendors are introducing confidential computing - an umbrella term aimed at providing hardware and software mechanisms for…
The kernel is the most safety- and security-critical component of many computer systems, as the most severe bugs lead to complete system crash or exploit. It is thus desirable to guarantee that a kernel is free from these bugs using formal…
A growing framework of legal and ethical requirements limit scientific and commercial evalua-tion of personal data. Typically, pseudonymization, encryption, or methods of distributed com-puting try to protect individual privacy. However,…
In systems owned by normal end-users, many times security attacks are mounted by sneaking in malicious applications or exploiting existing software vulnerabilities through security non-conforming actions of users. Virtualization approaches…
Device driver isolation is a promising approach for protecting the kernel from faulty or malicious drivers, but the actual security provided by such frameworks is often not well understood. Recent research has identified Compartment…
Enclaves have emerged as a particularly compelling primitive to implement trusted execution environments: strongly isolated sensitive user-mode processes in a largely untrusted software environment. While the threat models employed by…
Demand for data-intensive workloads and confidential computing are the prominent research directions shaping the future of cloud computing. Computer architectures are evolving to accommodate the computing of large data better. Protecting…
Isolating sensitive state and data can increase the security and robustness of many applications. Examples include protecting cryptographic keys against exploits like OpenSSL's Heartbleed bug or protecting a language runtime from native…
Confidential Virtual Machines (CVMs) are a type of VMbased Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) designed to enhance the security of cloud-based VMs, safeguarding them even from malicious hypervisors. Although CVMs have been widely adopted…
Confidential Computing enhances privacy of data in-use through hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) that use attestation to verify their integrity, authenticity, and certain runtime properties, along with those of the…