Confidential computing, powered by hardware technologies such as Intel SGX (Software Guard Extensions) and AMD SEV (Secure Encrypted Virtualization), promises strong isolation and transparent memory encryption.
Designed to protect against privileged attackers and physical threats such as bus snooping and cold boot attacks, these secure CPU enclaves are used predominantly in cloud computing environments to create protected memory regions that are encrypted and inaccessible to the rest of the system. However, security researchers from Begium’s KU Leuven University have developed a custom, low-cost DDR4 interposer that re-opens the door to supply chain attacks against even fully patched systems.
During a presentation at the Black Hat Europe conference on Wednesday, Jesse De Meulemeester and Jo Van Bulck demonstrated how this $50 piece of hardware made it possible to manipulate memory address mapping, effectively tricking the processor into granting unauthorized access to portions of encrypted memory.
