3 ms·
On the subject of RAM encryption, there's even an kernel modification that (ab)uses the x86 debug registers to store are AES key and transparently encrypts / de
by Confiks 8y ago
On the subject of RAM encryption, there's even an kernel modification that (ab)uses the x86 debug registers to store are AES key and transparently encrypts / decrypts RAM; Tresor.
> That [encrypted memory] in itself isn't sufficient to guard against all attacks
You might want to read about authenticated encryption [2]. The authenticity of the decrypted data often lies in the block cipher mode (for example OBS) rather than the block primitive, where Tresor uses the AES-NI instruction. I would imagine SGX does something along the same lines.
[1] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec11/tech/full_papers/Muller.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec11/tech/full_papers/M...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticated_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticated_encryption
- BeeOnRope 8y agoTRESOR doesn't have anything to do with encrypting RAM - it's just a tweak to existing disk encryption methods which stores the encryption key in a debug register, rather than RAM. This gives resistance against attackers trying to break your disk encryption by trying to read your key directly from RAM.
- Confiks 8y agoYes, indeed. Thanks for correcting that.