The latest security information on Intel® products.
Intel SGX Key Disclosure Claim
Announcement ID:
2024-08-29-001
Issue:
On August 26, 2024, a researcher affiliated with Positive Technologies tweeted that he had “extracted Intel SGX Fuse Key0, AKA Root Provisioning Key”, and that “Together with FK1 or Root Sealing Key (also compromised), it represents Root of Trust for SGX.”
The external parties mentioned are running tests on systems they have physical access to, which are not up to date with the latest mitigations and are not properly configured with Intel recommended Flash Descriptor write protection (which occurs as part of end of manufacturing by system manufacturers). Researchers are using previously mitigated vulnerabilities dating as far back as 2017 to gain access to what we call an Intel Unlocked state (aka “Red Unlocked”) so these findings are not surprising. See “Additional Resources” for links to technical papers describing these issues.
The mitigated vulnerabilities that allow access to the Intel Unlocked state only apply to the Denverton, Apollo Lake, Gemini Lake, and Gemini Lake Refresh platforms (Note: Of these platforms, only Gemini Lake and Gemini Lake Refresh support Intel® Software Guard Extensions (SGX)). No other Intel processors or platforms are affected. Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (Intel® TDX) is also not affected.
In addition, the key the researcher claims to have extracted is encrypted, not plain text. The encryption protecting the key would have to be broken to use it for malicious purposes, and then it would only apply to the individual system under attack.
Resolution/Recommendations:
- Ensure the system manufacturer configured systems at the end of manufacturing to enable Intel® Firmware Version Control to help prevent this and other vulnerabilities.
- System manufacturers, complete End of Manufacturing process, set Manufacturing Mode to Disabled, and enable Intel® Firmware Version Control.
- Ensuring all security mitigations provided by Intel are applied.
- Customers can use Intel’s open source CHIPSEC tool to verify the security configuration of their firmware.
Additional resources:
Intel® Management Engine Critical Firmware Update (Intel-SA-00086)
IPAS: Bug Bounty Bonus: Pentium®, Intel Atom®, and Celeron® Processors - Intel Community
Intel Converged Security Management Engine (CSME)
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