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Intel SGX: Microcode Patch Needed for PLATYPUS Secrets-Leaking Attack

The new PLATYPUS attack can be used to access and leak encryption keys and other sensitive information from the Linux kernel's memory or Intel SGX enclaves. In response to PLATYPUS, Linux kernel developers have released a security update that revokes unprivileged access to energy consumption data. . Researchers have devised a new method that allows potential attackers to leak sensitive information such as encryption keys from the Linux kernel's memory and Intel SGX enclaves. The attack, dubbed PLATYPUS, abuses a legitimate CPU interface for monitoring and controlling the power consumption. "Using PLATYPUS, we demonstrate that we can observe variations in the power consumption to distinguish different instructions and different Hamming weights of operands and memory loads, allowing inference of loaded values," the team of researchers from the Graz University of Technology, the University of Birmingham in UK, and CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security said on a website dedicated to the attack . "PLATYPUS can further infer intra-cacheline control flow of applications, break KASLR, leak AES-NI keys from Intel SGX enclaves and the Linux kernel, and establish a timing-independent covert channel." . Uncover the ways PLATYPUS exploits vulnerabilities to expose confidential data and the critical update to CPU microcode necessary for mitigation.. PLATYPUS Leak, Intel SGX Patch, Microcode Security, Encryption Secrets, Linux Kernel Attack. . Brittany Day

Nov 13, 2020 • Brittany Day Security Vulnerabilities