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arXiv:1712.05090cs.CR

Secure Encrypted Virtualization is Unsecure

Zhao-Hui Du, Zhiwei Ying, Zhenke Ma, Yufei Mai, Phoebe Wang, Jesse Liu, Jesse Fang

Abstract

Virtualization has become more important since cloud computing is getting more and more popular than before. There is an increasing demand for security among the cloud customers. AMD plans to provide Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) technology in its latest processor EPYC to protect virtual machines by encrypting its memory but without integrity protection. In this paper, we analyzed the weakness in the SEV design due to lack of integrity protection thus it is not so secure. Using different design flaw in physical address-based tweak algorithm to protect against ciphertext block move attacks, we found a realistic attack against SEV which could obtain the root privilege of an encrypted virtual machine protected by SEV. A demo to simulate the attack against a virtual machine protected by SEV is done in a Ryzen machine which supports Secure Memory Encryption (SME) technology since SEV enabled machine is still not available in market.

arXiv comments
10 pages, 16 figures
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cs.CRCryptography and Security

On Hacker News

Linked by 3 identifiable commenters in 3 comments across 3 threads, from Jun 2020 to Mar 2021.

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Discussed in comments3 threads

  1. Intel to Build Silicon for Fully Homomorphic Encryption 1 comment

    • We already have AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). If you trust AMD, you can have a secure VM running on that CPU that's totally opaque to the person who owns the CPU. So even if the KGB could own the CPU, and the USA's president could use a VM on it in full confidence…

      rstuart4133View on HNParent context

  2. Confidential VMs 1 comment

    • Another paper that mentions AES in the ECB mode is "Secure Encrypted Virtualization is Unsecure!" [0] [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.05090.pdf

      frankjrView on HNParent context

  3. How SGX Fails in Practice 1 comment

    • SEV has been subjected to its own share of attacks (and design/implementation fails), but note that it has a different threat model. * https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.05090.pdf 2017 * https://arxiv.org/pdf/1612.01119.pdf 2017 * https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.09604.pdf 2018 *…

      ENOTTYView on HNParent context

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