2017/12/22 by Raoul Strackx, Frank Piessens, Strackx, Raoul +1 · 2 citations
Computer Science · #Advanced Malware Detection Techniques #Cryptographic Implementations and Security #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Security and Verification in Computing
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1712.08519
openalex publication_date 2017/12/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Protected-module architectures (PMAs) have been proposed to provide strong\nisolation guarantees, even on top of a compromised system. Unfortunately, Intel\nSGX -- the only publicly available high-end PMA -- has been shown to only\nprovide limited isolation. An attacker controlling the untrusted page tables,\ncan learn enclave secrets by observing its page access patterns.\n Fortifying existing protected-module architectures in a real-world setting\nagainst side-channel attacks is an extremely difficult task as system software\n(hypervisor, operating system, ...) needs to remain in full control over the\nunderlying hardware. Most state-of-the-art solutions propose a reactive defense\nthat monitors for signs of an attack. Such approaches unfortunately cannot\ndetect the most novel attacks, suffer from false-positives, and place an\nextraordinary heavy burden on enclave-developers when an attack is detected.\n We present Heisenberg, a proactive defense that provides complete protection\nagainst page table based side channels. We guarantee that any attack will\neither be prevented or detected automatically before em any sensitive\ninformation leaks. Consequently, Heisenberg can always securely resume enclave\nexecution -- even when the attacker is still present in the system.\n We present two implementations. Heisenberg-HW relies on very limited hardware\nfeatures to defend against page-table-based attacks. We use the x86/SGX\nplatform as an example, but the same approach can be applied when\nprotected-module architectures are ported to different platforms as well.\n Heisenberg-SW avoids these hardware modifications and can readily be applied.\nUnfortunately, it's reliance on Intel Transactional Synchronization Extensions\n(TSX) may lead to significant performance overhead under real-life conditions.\n