[HN Gopher] Automatic Extraction of Secrets from the Transistor ...
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       Automatic Extraction of Secrets from the Transistor Jungle Using
       Laser-Assisted [pdf]
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2021-09-01 05:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.usenix.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.usenix.org)
        
       | progbits wrote:
       | Impressive results.
       | 
       | Can anyone think of negative consequences for end-users? I
       | imagine this is not really a practical attack vector on your
       | YubiKey's 2FA keys or TPM disk encryption keys.
       | 
       | All the applications I can think of are unwanted just for DRM and
       | other compute-freedom restrictions, which I see as a win. (See
       | sibling comment from no_time).
       | 
       | Maybe one edge case would be things like SGX? IIUC being able to
       | extract the secret keys would allow one to write an emulator that
       | can run arbitrary code and pass remote attestation, while still
       | being able to inspect (and modify) the code and data. This is
       | something which feels at least somewhat useful and not
       | fundamentally user-hostile. But my understanding is that the
       | security model there might be broken regardless.
        
         | baybal2 wrote:
         | There are already services to do "firmware recovery" from
         | individual credit cards in China.
         | 
         | Those guys allegedly have access to TEM labs. TEM is a much
         | more impressive, and expensive piece of hardware than this.
         | 
         | Usually there are just a dozen of TEM labs per an
         | industrialised country.
        
         | _nhynes wrote:
         | > One might argue that it is not always true that the adversary
         | can program different keys into the NVM on a training device,
         | for instance, when one-time programmable (OTP) memories like
         | e-fuses or ROMs are used. We admit that such keys cannot be
         | extracted using our approach.
         | 
         | The SGX remote attestation key is burnt into the chip during
         | manufacture and isn't programmable.
        
           | no_time wrote:
           | Extracting a single SGX private key is less desirable but
           | nonetheless practical even if the hardware gets destroyed in
           | the process. You could load the extracted key into an
           | emulator and do your computing that way. It just does not
           | scale unfortunately.
           | 
           | Decrypting the firmware of ME or AMD PSP this way could
           | totally work though.
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | Hardware roots of trust are used for secure boot and device
         | encryption. There are definitely downsides to secure boot
         | systems but for the average user it just means better security.
         | I don't think there are any real downsides to device
         | encryption.
        
       | qualudeheart wrote:
       | Uh oh.
        
       | no_time wrote:
       | Very nice job. Imagine an alternative universe without the DMCA
       | where we could crowd fund the secret extraction of these
       | processors to increase user freedom.
        
         | mateo1 wrote:
         | I don't think there's going to be a consumer application of
         | this anytime soon. However this seems practical enough for big
         | organizations to break things like TPM, clone
         | credit/debit/SIM/NFC cards and do cybersecurity research.
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-01 10:00 UTC)