3 ms·
Modern CPUs have a lot of cache these days. Couldn't the keys be store there are well (assuming the threat is just the removal and reading of RAM)?
by RexRollman 13y ago
Modern CPUs have a lot of cache these days. Couldn't the keys be store there are well (assuming the threat is just the removal and reading of RAM)?
- sweis 13y agoHi. L3 caches are indeed huge these days. For example, the latest Mac Pros are shipping with 30MB L3 caches. You can do a lot with that space. My company PrivateCore runs an entire Linux/KVM stack within the L3 cache, then fully encrypts main memory. Someone physically acquiring memory would only obtain plaintext. Note that a software compromise could still read memory. That's one reason why it's necessary to fully attest a system before provisioning it with any keys or passwords. Here's a CanSecWest talk with more details: http://cansecwest.com/slides/2013/PrivateCore%20CSW%202013.pdf http://cansecwest.com/slides/2013/PrivateCore%20CSW%202013.p...
- RexRollman 13y agoThanks!
- jevinskie 13y agoVery cool! How small of a cache can you work in?
- informatimago 13y agoYou mean cypher text. Plain text is clear text is unencrypted.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- keeperofdakeys 13y agoThe caches are designed to be transparent, so you can't store data in them separately. Not to mention that your program could be interrupted at any point, so the OS would have to backup this data into ram (like it does registers).