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Researchers Point Out 'Theoretical' Security Flaws In AMD's Upcoming Zen CPU (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via BleepingComputer: The security protocol that governs how virtual machines share data on a host system powered by AMD Zen processors has been found to be insecure, at least in theory, according to two German researchers. The technology, called Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), is designed to encrypt parts of the memory shared by different virtual machines on cloud servers. AMD, who plans to ship SEV with its upcoming line of Zen processors, has published the technical documentation for the SEV technology this past April. The German researchers have analyzed the design of SEV, using this public documentation, and said they managed to identify three attack channels, which work, at least in theory.
[In a technical paper released over the past weekend, the researchers described their attacks:] "We show how a malicious hypervisor can force the guest to perform arbitrary read and write operations on protected memory. We describe how to completely disable any SEV memory protection configured by the tenant. We implement a replay attack that uses captured login data to gain access to the target system by solely exploiting resource management features of a hypervisor." AMD is scheduled to ship SEV with the Zen processor line in the first quarter of 2017.
[In a technical paper released over the past weekend, the researchers described their attacks:] "We show how a malicious hypervisor can force the guest to perform arbitrary read and write operations on protected memory. We describe how to completely disable any SEV memory protection configured by the tenant. We implement a replay attack that uses captured login data to gain access to the target system by solely exploiting resource management features of a hypervisor." AMD is scheduled to ship SEV with the Zen processor line in the first quarter of 2017.
This is simply paid Intel FUD against their only competitor in the x86 space. All Intel chips have ring 0 and higher vulnerabilities- which is why Windows and Linux machines can be 'pwned' so easily in competitions that offer rewards to hackers who can breach fully patched x86 machines. All of Intel's so-called unhackable private memory space hardware functions have been shown to be utterly useless against informed attacks.
And worse, Intel (and AMD) have NSA and GCHQ back-doors in their CPUs that operate above ring 0 using chip internal resources that no external security program can lock-down. And what the NSA knows, Israel government agents know. And what Israel knows, criminal tribe members in the Ukraine and other East European crime cesspits know.
No 'magic' hardware in any of your CPUs is going to make your computer safe from hacking. Saying otherwise is simple markeding puffery from Intel and AMD. But saying that AMD is 'broken' without reporting the fact that so is Intel- thanks to the NSA- is simple pro-Intel advertising.