DDRop: dropping DDR5 writes breaks freshness in confidential VMs on Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP
jedisct1 · x · 2026-09-15
Researchers disclose DDRop (ACM CCS '26, coordinated with Intel and AMD): a low-cost hardware memory interposer that silently drops DDR5 writes, making confidential VMs read stale attacker-controlled data.
- Root cause: memory encryption in Intel TDX, Scalable SGX, and AMD SEV-SNP provides confidentiality but not freshness—the CPU can verify memory is encrypted, not that it is current
- Impact: can tamper with protected VMs on both Intel and AMD platforms, and on Intel TDX can even forge the attestation evidence used to prove a VM is trusted
- Analogy: encrypted memory is a locked notebook without page numbers or dates; a dropped line still decrypts to valid-looking text
A serious hardware attack on confidential computing for shared cloud infrastructure.
Related event: DDRop attack silently drops DDR5 writes to break confidential VMs(2 posts)→
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