SEVurity: No Security Without Integrity -- Breaking Integrity-Free Memory Encryption with Minimal Assumptions

Understand

One reason for not adopting cloud services is the required trust in the cloud provider: As they control the hypervisor, any data processed in the system is accessible to them.

• Full memory encryption for Virtual Machines (VM) protects against curious cloud providers as well as otherwise compromised hypervisors.
• AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) is the most prevalent hardware-based full memory encryption for VMs.
• Its newest extension, SEV-ES, also protects the entire VM state during context switches, aiming to ensure that the host neither learns anything about the data that is processed inside the VM, nor is able to modify its execution state.