[The Exiled]

SgxSpectre Attack Can Extract Data from Intel SGX Enclaves

Intel Software Guard eXtensions (SGX) is a feature of modern Intel processors that allow an application to create so-called enclaves. This enclave is a hardware-isolated section of the CPU's processing memory where applications can run operations that deal with extremely sensitive details, such as encryption keys, passwords, user data, and more. According to researchers, SgxSpectre works because of specific code patterns in software libraries that allow developers to add SGX support to their apps. Vulnerable SGX development kits include the Intel SGX SDK, Rust-SGX, and Graphene-SGX. Intel's recent Spectre patches don't necessarily help, as an attacker can work around these fixes. Intel says an update for the Intel SGX SDK that adds SgxSpectre mitigations will be released on March 16. App developers will need to integrate this new SDK version into their SGX-capable apps and issue an update to users. Apps that implement Google's Retpoline anti-Spectre coding techniques are safe, researchers say.