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How many times has SGX been broken now? When (if ever) could a reasonable person think "ok, now they must have got rid of all the vulnerabilities, time to trus

How many times has SGX been broken now? When (if ever) could a reasonable person think "ok, now they must have got rid of all the vulnerabilities, time to trust this!" ? ...and then Intel will add another new architectural feature that will interact with SGX in some unforeseen way and break it yet again. SGX is surely just too fragile?

Syonyk 4y ago
> How many times has SGX been broken now? Quite a few. L1TF/Foreshadow was pretty catastrophic, and Plundervolt was just funny. In name and execution. Plus various others. > When (if ever) could a reasonable person think "ok, now they must have got rid of all the vulnerabilities, time to trust this!" ? Never. Nor should one trust Intel chips for sensitive computations, given how badly they leak and how badly Intel seems to be at reasoning about this. I'm getting rid of the last of my Intel systems this month (beyond random compute nodes for BOINC stuff I run them with 'mitigations=off' for max performance because they have literally nothing at all sensitive on them, not even passwords - I use different passwords for them).
intelVISA 4y ago
>How many times has SGX been broken now? So frequently that I believe it's deprecated nowadays.
- anonymousDan 4y ago
  Not true, it is still being pushed for datacenter applications/servers (e.g. where you have an 'untrusted' cloud provider).
  - als0 4y ago
    Partly true, it is deprecated in client devices https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-intel-chips-wont-play-blu-ray-disks-due-to-sgx-deprecation/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-intel-chi...
strstr 4y ago
SGX’s per-chip private keys are the “flag” in Intel’s unintentional CPU vulnerability CTF. Those keys have been popped so many times. Reading the original they explicitly state that side channels are out of scope for their threat model. As a result, designed a system that was essentially maximally vulnerable to side-channels (and other architectural issues). It’s really hard to trust SGX as a result. Otoh, if I were in a bind and needed to do trusted computation on an untrusted host, are there really other options that don’t suffer similar (or worse) issues?
- anonymousDan 4y ago
  Not really (at least not on 'commodity' CPUs). It is still an active (and very interesting) area of research. There is a lot of work going on into both attacks and practical defenses for this kind of stuff. Whether it is truly solvable in practical settings remains unclear. I do believe it raises the bar enough for it to be useful in many scenarios though.

Syonyk 4y ago

> How many times has SGX been broken now? Quite a few. L1TF/Foreshadow was pretty catastrophic, and Plundervolt was just funny. In name and execution. Plus various others. > When (if ever) could a reasonable person think "ok, now they must have got rid of all the vulnerabilities, time to trust this!" ? Never. Nor should one trust Intel chips for sensitive computations, given how badly they leak and how badly Intel seems to be at reasoning about this. I'm getting rid of the last of my Intel systems this month (beyond random compute nodes for BOINC stuff I run them with 'mitigations=off' for max performance because they have literally nothing at all sensitive on them, not even passwords - I use different passwords for them).

intelVISA 4y ago

>How many times has SGX been broken now? So frequently that I believe it's deprecated nowadays.

anonymousDan 4y ago
Not true, it is still being pushed for datacenter applications/servers (e.g. where you have an 'untrusted' cloud provider).
- als0 4y ago
  Partly true, it is deprecated in client devices https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-intel-chips-wont-play-blu-ray-disks-due-to-sgx-deprecation/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-intel-chi...

strstr 4y ago

SGX’s per-chip private keys are the “flag” in Intel’s unintentional CPU vulnerability CTF. Those keys have been popped so many times. Reading the original they explicitly state that side channels are out of scope for their threat model. As a result, designed a system that was essentially maximally vulnerable to side-channels (and other architectural issues). It’s really hard to trust SGX as a result. Otoh, if I were in a bind and needed to do trusted computation on an untrusted host, are there really other options that don’t suffer similar (or worse) issues?

anonymousDan 4y ago
Not really (at least not on 'commodity' CPUs). It is still an active (and very interesting) area of research. There is a lot of work going on into both attacks and practical defenses for this kind of stuff. Whether it is truly solvable in practical settings remains unclear. I do believe it raises the bar enough for it to be useful in many scenarios though.