confidential computing tagged posts

Public cloud services employ special security technologies. Computer scientists at ETH Zurich have now discovered a gap in the latest security mechanisms used by AMD and Intel chips. This affects major cloud providers.

Over the past few years, hardware manufacturers have developed technologies that ought to make it possible for companies and governmental organizations to process sensitive data securely using shared cloud computing resources.

Known as confidential computing, this approach protects sensitive data while it is being processed by isolating it in an area that is impenetrable to other users and even to the cloud provider...

Over the past few years, hardware manufacturers have developed technologies that ought to make it possible for companies and governmental organizations to process sensitive data securely using shared cloud computing resources. Known as confidential computing, this approach protects sensitive data while it is being processed by isolating it in an area that is impenetrable to other users and even to the cloud provider. But computer scientists at ETH Zurich have now proven that it is possible for hackers to gain access to these systems and to the data stored in them.

The researchers ran two attack scenarios, both using what’s known as the interrupt mechanism, which temporarily disrupts regular processing—for instance to prioritize a different computing task...