New physical attacks are quickly diluting secure enclave defenses from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/10/new-physical-attacks-are-quickly-diluting-secure-enclave-defenses-from-nvidia-amd-and-intel/

45 points · 8 comments · view on lemmy.world

8 Comments

Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 320d (6 replies)

This one area I don't have even superficial knowledge of, but armchair logic suggests if you have physical access, it's reasonable to assume with enough resources (and time), you can probably find a way to defeat TEEs.

How relevant this is to the real world is a separate question.

Blaster_M@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 320d

This is the same tired "well it can be defeated so no security is better than fake security" excuse people already make. The point is to make it take so long to break in the value of what is extracted has expired by the time they do.

If your phone is yoinked by the bois for evidence, do you want them to see what you've been doing on your ohone right away? And "nothing to hide" doesn't matter if they can use mental gymnastics to spin innocence into guilt. At least with long enough protection timing you have a shot at getting through via lack of tangible evidence.

ryannathans@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 320d (3 replies)

Kinda fucks apps like signal up if they need to rely on the secure enclave on cloud servers

tfm@piefed.europe.pub · 2 pts · 319d (2 replies)

Stuff is already encrypted when they reach their servers

ryannathans@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 319d (1 reply)

https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

Features like this depend on the secure enclave

tfm@piefed.europe.pub · 1 pts · 318d

Fair point

jacksilver@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 320d

Yeah, in the article they even say manufacturers don't provide any guarantees against physical attacks.

fubarx@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 319d

If someone gets physical access, all bets are off. Just wire a ChipWhisperer (https://www.newae.com/chipwhisperer) between the TEE and the CPU or GPU, and it's trivial to get around all protections. Throw in clock or voltage-glitching and...