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Any chance Google will sponsor secure processor architecture standards? I mean, the US government no doubt had influence on the Trusted Computing Group (too ba

by ryacko 9y ago

Any chance Google will sponsor secure processor architecture standards? I mean, the US government no doubt had influence on the Trusted Computing Group (too bad the EFF totally shunned it), and through the magic of product binning and chip fab costs, we all have trusted platform modules. ASLR currently seems wimpy. I'm certain you are in a position to accomplish a great deal, no matter where you are in the hierarchy. Maybe the future is x86 hardware emulation for user mode processes.

standupstandup 9y ago
It's Intel pushing that stuff forward, with SGX.
- ryacko 9y ago
  Then from recent Defcon and Black Hat talks, they are an absymal failure. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0nh-TdpVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0nh-TdpVg Memory Sinkhole - Unleashing An X86 Design Flaw Allowing Universal Privilege Escalation ) (I don't understand it beyond what everyone says it can achieve) Intel should be considered to be totally unreliable and incompetent. I mean, no one buys office store safes and expects their things to be secure in them. But a processor is a little more expensive than a cheap safe and holds more valuable things. Edit: and besides, Fortezza is an SSL protocol option.
  - standupstandup 9y ago
    SGX is designed to shield software against SMM exploits.
  - ryacko 9y ago
    >SGX is designed to shield software against SMM exploits. Perhaps if we add one more thing, x86 will finally be secure. You are right, Intel should be left to their own devices.
    - hateduser2 9y ago
      Seems like you replied to the wrong comment, the intended parent might not see your reply because of this.. probably should repost it in the right place
      - ryacko 9y ago
        Hmm. I thought comment chains were limited in length.
        hateduser2 9y ago
        Not that I know of.. although the reply button sometimes doesn’t show up.. you just have to click Into a comment if it’s missing for you
    - standupstandup 9y ago
      I'm not arguing that x86 will ever really be secure. However you handwaved a hypothetical "secure processor architecture". Realistically the way you do that is by making a very simple CPU, however, that would then be too slow to be usable for many applications. As a consequence nobody is doing so. SGX is at least a middle ground - it integrates the memory access checks very deep into the memory access circuitry, sufficiently deep to block all other privilege levels on the CPU. Whilst there may well be implementation flaws in SGX itself so far most attacks have been mounted via side channels, not directly exploiting CPU bugs. In this sense my original statement was correct. Intel is pushing secure CPUs forward more than any other vendor.
      - ryacko 9y ago
        I think a secure processor is very complex, not very simple. The smartest person's working memory cannot operate on more than a few hundred lines of code. A high performance processor that induces a fault when a programming error occurs is certainly very complex. It is the wrong sense. Intel is playing catchup more than any other vendor and are selling a product that is nothing more than a bunch of cobbled together features, my opinion in the view of the statement that AMD is glued together.
nickpsecurity 9y ago
The US and UK governments especially have been sponsoring great architectures for security that are described in enough detail for hardware engineers to implement or straight-up open source. CHERI at Cambridge is one of the latter which already runs FreeBSD. All Google has to do is pay a good team/company to build one that's reusable for their various products and services. Then, they can start targeting those to it at software level for better efficiency. The project would cost money that Google has. There's not much new to invent, though. They just have to apply what's there. The performance penalties and ASIC costs are even much lower than they were in the past. Google refuses to do these things because either (a) they don't know about them or (b) more likely their management doesn't want to commit that much money to secure hardware. Typical of the big companies with the smartcard market the only exception far as stuff non-enterprises could afford. For a quick example, they did retool software to support OpenPOWER architecture but could've also funded Raptor Workstation in a desktop or esp server form themselves. It would've been to their budget like pennies are to ours. Not even that. At least they did the Chromebooks, though, which are good for a lot of non-technical folks.

by ryacko 9y ago

standupstandup 9y ago

It's Intel pushing that stuff forward, with SGX.

ryacko 9y ago
Then from recent Defcon and Black Hat talks, they are an absymal failure. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0nh-TdpVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0nh-TdpVg Memory Sinkhole - Unleashing An X86 Design Flaw Allowing Universal Privilege Escalation ) (I don't understand it beyond what everyone says it can achieve) Intel should be considered to be totally unreliable and incompetent. I mean, no one buys office store safes and expects their things to be secure in them. But a processor is a little more expensive than a cheap safe and holds more valuable things. Edit: and besides, Fortezza is an SSL protocol option.
- standupstandup 9y ago
  SGX is designed to shield software against SMM exploits.
- ryacko 9y ago
  >SGX is designed to shield software against SMM exploits. Perhaps if we add one more thing, x86 will finally be secure. You are right, Intel should be left to their own devices.
  - hateduser2 9y ago
    Seems like you replied to the wrong comment, the intended parent might not see your reply because of this.. probably should repost it in the right place
    - ryacko 9y ago
      Hmm. I thought comment chains were limited in length.
      - hateduser2 9y ago
        Not that I know of.. although the reply button sometimes doesn’t show up.. you just have to click Into a comment if it’s missing for you
  - standupstandup 9y ago
    I'm not arguing that x86 will ever really be secure. However you handwaved a hypothetical "secure processor architecture". Realistically the way you do that is by making a very simple CPU, however, that would then be too slow to be usable for many applications. As a consequence nobody is doing so. SGX is at least a middle ground - it integrates the memory access checks very deep into the memory access circuitry, sufficiently deep to block all other privilege levels on the CPU. Whilst there may well be implementation flaws in SGX itself so far most attacks have been mounted via side channels, not directly exploiting CPU bugs. In this sense my original statement was correct. Intel is pushing secure CPUs forward more than any other vendor.
    - ryacko 9y ago
      I think a secure processor is very complex, not very simple. The smartest person's working memory cannot operate on more than a few hundred lines of code. A high performance processor that induces a fault when a programming error occurs is certainly very complex. It is the wrong sense. Intel is playing catchup more than any other vendor and are selling a product that is nothing more than a bunch of cobbled together features, my opinion in the view of the statement that AMD is glued together.

nickpsecurity 9y ago

The US and UK governments especially have been sponsoring great architectures for security that are described in enough detail for hardware engineers to implement or straight-up open source. CHERI at Cambridge is one of the latter which already runs FreeBSD. All Google has to do is pay a good team/company to build one that's reusable for their various products and services. Then, they can start targeting those to it at software level for better efficiency. The project would cost money that Google has. There's not much new to invent, though. They just have to apply what's there. The performance penalties and ASIC costs are even much lower than they were in the past. Google refuses to do these things because either (a) they don't know about them or (b) more likely their management doesn't want to commit that much money to secure hardware. Typical of the big companies with the smartcard market the only exception far as stuff non-enterprises could afford. For a quick example, they did retool software to support OpenPOWER architecture but could've also funded Raptor Workstation in a desktop or esp server form themselves. It would've been to their budget like pennies are to ours. Not even that. At least they did the Chromebooks, though, which are good for a lot of non-technical folks.