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SEV is fundamentally less secure than SGX because it only provides memory encryption but no integrity protection. Enclaves are a challenging problem given the m
by anonymousDan 6y ago
SEV is fundamentally less secure than SGX because it only provides memory encryption but no integrity protection. Enclaves are a challenging problem given the much more aggressive threat model, but SGX is the better security model of the two IMO.
- lima 6y agoYes - in a recent paper by Wilke et al[0], they nicely demonstrate how the lack of integrity checking can be exploited. SEV is a very new technology and its current (and previous) iterations have known weaknesses. The next generation of SEV will likely have SEV-SNP[1], which will prevent the host from writing guest memory/messing with the guest's page mappings. Will probably take a few more iterations to stabilize. At that point, it should provide decent security guarantees. Current-gen SGX has much stronger guarantees (conceptually, at least) with full memory integrity checking and less attack surface, but it suffers from CPU vulnerabilities, most of which AMD didn't have, and the integrity checks and architecture come at a large performance and development cost. SEV has different tradeoffs that make it much more useful for real-world use cases, while still providing strong security guarantees. [0]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.11071.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.11071.pdf [1]: https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/SEV-SNP-strengthening-vm-isolation-with-integrity-protection-and-more.pdf https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/SEV-SNP-strengthen...
- anonymousDan 6y agoOh nice, hadn't heard about SNP yet - looks interesting.