Computer scientists discover vulnerability in cloud server hardware used by AMD and Intel chips

Public cloud services employ special security technologies. Computer scientists at ETH Zurich have now discovered a gap in the latest security mechanisms used by AMD and Intel chips. This affects major cloud providers.

Over the past few years, hardware manufacturers have developed technologies that ought to make it possible for companies and governmental organizations to process sensitive data securely using shared cloud computing resources.

Known as confidential computing, this approach protects sensitive data while it is being processed by isolating it in an area that is impenetrable to other users and even to the cloud provider. But computer scientists at ETH Zurich have now proved that it is possible for hackers to gain access to these systems and to the data stored in them.

Eavesdrop-proof smartphone project helps find the gaps

Shinde's team uncovered the security gaps while examining the confidential computing technologies used in AMD and Intel processors. The researchers wanted to gain an in-depth understanding of how these processors function because they are working on an eavesdrop-proof smartphone based on confidential computing.

Instability factor number one: Hypervisors
In the public cloud, applications are isolated using a TEE, specifically from what's known as a hypervisor. Cloud providers use hypervisor software to manage resources ranging from hardware components to their customers' virtual servers. Hypervisors are an important part of cloud services because they create the required flexibility, efficiency and security.
Fully isolating the hypervisor is impossible

There are, however, fundamental limitations as to how well a user system can be isolated and protected from the hypervisor. After all, some communication must take place between the two, and as an administrative tool, the hypervisor still has to be able to perform its core tasks. These include allocating cloud resources and managing the virtual server running the secured system in the cloud.

One of the remaining interfaces between the hypervisor and the TEE concerns the management of interrupts. The ETH team launched what are known as Ahoi attacks to exploit the hypervisor as a means of sending coordinated interrupts to the secured system at any time.

Interrupt heckles knock security off its game
By sending coordinated interrupt heckles, the ETH scientists managed to confuse a TEE-secured system so effectively that they were able to gain root access—in other words, take full control. "Most affected by this problem was AMD's confidential computing, which proved vulnerable to attack from several different interrupts. In the case of Intel, only one interrupt door had been left open," Shinde says in summarizing the results of her "Heckler attack."

Byproduct on the path to user control of phones
As important as it is to find gaps in the security for sensitive data stored in the public cloud, for Shinde and her research group this was merely a byproduct on the path to ensuring that users of iPhones and Android smartphones retain full control over their data and applications.

Website: computerscientists.net

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