Software Guard Extensions

Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) is a set of central processing unit (CPU) instruction codes from Intel that allows user-level code to allocate private regions of memory, called enclaves, that are protected from processes running at higher privilege levels.[1] Intel designed SGX to be useful for implementing secure remote computation, secure web browsing, and digital rights management (DRM).[2]

Details

Support for SGX in the CPU is indicated in CPUID "Structured Extended feature Leaf", EBX bit 02,[3] but its availability to applications requires BIOS support and opt-in enabling which is not reflected in CPUID bits. This complicates the feature detection logic for applications.[4]

Emulation of SGX was added to an experimental version of the QEMU system emulator in 2014.[5] In 2015, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology released an open-source simulator known as OpenSGX.[6]

It was introduced in 2015 with the sixth generation Intel Core microprocessors based on the Skylake microarchitecture.

One example of SGX used in security was a demo application from wolfSSL[7] using it for cryptography algorithms. One example of a secure service built using SGX is Fortanix's key management service.[8] This entire cloud based service is built using SGX servers and designed to provide privacy from cloud providers. An additional example is Numecent using SGX to protect the DRM that is used to authorize application execution with their Cloudpaging application delivery products.

Intel Goldmont Plus (Gemini Lake) microarchitecture will also add support for Intel SGX.

Prime+Probe attack

On 27 March 2017 researchers at Austria's Graz University of Technology developed a proof-of-concept that can grab RSA keys from SGX enclaves running on the same system within five minutes by using certain CPU instructions in lieu of a fine-grained timer to exploit cache DRAM side-channels.[9][10] One countermeasure for this type of attack was presented and published by Daniel Gruss et al. at the USENIX Security Symposium in 2017.[11] Among other published countermeasures, one countermeasure to this type of attack was published on September 28, 2017, a compiler-based tool, DR.SGX,[12] that claims to have superior performance with the elimination of the implementation complexity of other proposed solutions.

Spectre-like attack

The LSDS group at Imperial College London showed a proof of concept that the Spectre speculative execution security vulnerability can be adapted to attack the secure enclave.[13] The Foreshadow attack, disclosed in August 2018, combines speculative execution and buffer overflow to bypass the SGX.[14]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Intel SGX for Dummies (Intel SGX Design Objectives)". intel.com. 2013-09-26.
  2. ↑ "Intel SGX Details". intel.com. 2017-07-05.
  3. ↑ Intel Architecture Instruction Set Extensions Programming Reference, Intel, AUGUST 2015, page 36 "Structured Extended feature Leaf EAX=07h, EBX Bit 02: SGX"
  4. ↑ "Properly Detecting Intel Software Guard Extensions in Your Applications". intel.com. 2016-05-13.
  5. ↑ https://tc.gtisc.gatech.edu/bss/2014/l/final/pjain43.pdf
  6. ↑ "sslab-gatech/opensgx". GitHub. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  7. ↑ "wolfSSL At IDF". wolfssl. 2016-08-11.
  8. ↑ "Interview with Ambuj Kumar, CEO and Co-founder of Fortanix". virtual-strategy.com. 2017-12-20. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  9. ↑ Chirgwin, Richard (March 7, 2017). "Boffins show Intel's SGX can leak crypto keys". The Register. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  10. ↑ Schwarz, Michael; Weiser, Samuel; Gruss, Daniel; Maurice, Clémentine; Mangard, Stefan (March 1, 2017). "Malware Guard Extension: Using SGX to Conceal Cache Attacks". Graz University of Technology. arXiv:1702.08719. Bibcode:2017arXiv170208719S.
  11. ↑ "Strong and Efficient Cache Side-Channel Protection using Hardware Transactional Memory" (PDF). USENIX. 2017-08-16.
  12. ↑ "DR.SGX: Hardening SGX Enclaves against Cache Attacks with Data Location Randomization" (PDF). 2017-09-28.
  13. ↑ Sample code demonstrating a Spectre-like attack against an Intel SGX enclave.
  14. ↑ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/new-spectre-like-attack-uses-speculative-execution-to-overflow-buffers/
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.