Intel Corporation

Mcafee, Inc.

Karanvir S Grewal

David M Durham

Sergej Deutsch

Michael E Kounavis

Ravi L Sahita

Siddhartha Chhabra

Prashant Dewan

Michael Lemay

Men Long

Salmin Sultana

Rajat Agarwal

Kapil Sood

Hormuzd M Khosravi

Xiaozhu Kang

Michael D LeMay

Ned M Smith

Jesse R Walker

Santosh Ghosh

Nitin V Sarangdhar

Scott H Robinson

Amitabh Das

Ioannis T Schoinas

Alpa T Narendra Trivedi

Andrew James Weiler

Wenjie Xiong

Gilbert A Neiger

Vedvyas Shanbhogue

Jason W Brandt

Carlos V Rozas

Barry E Huntley

Baiju V Patel

Jr-Shian Tsai

Howard C Herbert

Wei Wu

Vadim Sukhomlinov

Geoffrey Cooper

Xiaoning Li

Ulhas S Warrier

Joseph Frank Cihula

Ansuya Negi

Mingwei Zhang

John Richard Guzik

Ajay G Gupta

Josh Triplett

Saeedeh Komijani

Krishna Bhuyan

Kai Cong

James C Farwell

Ye Zhuang

Ramkumar Venkatachary

Balaji Vembu

Travis T Schluessler

Uday R Savagaonkar

Francis X Mckeen

Geoffrey S Strongin

Sreenivas Subramoney

Scott R Janus

Dan Baum

Michael A Goldsmith

Jason Martin

Avigdor Dori Eldar

Jonathan Lewis Edwards

Abhishek Basak

Jayesh Gaur

Anant V Nori

Bo A Zhang

Uri Blumenthal

Mark Shanahan

Shanwei Cen

Paul S Schmitz

Christoph Dobraunig

Steven D Williams

Hans Goran Liljestrand

Krystian Matusiewicz

Ghayathri V Garudapuram

Ahuva Kroiser

Alpha T Narendra Trivedi

Jeong Yoon

Ling Huang

Marc Millier

John R Guzik

Geoffrey H Cooper

In one embodiment, a processor includes a memory hierarchy that stores encrypted data, tracking circuitry that tracks an execution context for instructions executed by the processor, and cryptographic computing circuitry to encrypt/decrypt data that is stored in the memory hierarchy. The cryptographic computing circuitry obtains context information from the tracking circuitry for a load instruction to be executed by the processor, where the context information indicates information about branch predictions made by a branch prediction unit of the processor, and decrypts the encrypted data using a key and the context information as a tweak input to the decryption.

Cryptographic computing with context information for transient side channel security

Techniques for cryptographic computing isolation are described. A processor includes circuitry to be coupled to memory configured to store one or more instructions. The circuitry is to execute the one or more instructions to instantiate a first process based on an application. To instantiate the first process is to include creating a context table to be used by the first process, identifying a software component to be invoked during the first process, encrypting the software component using a first cryptographic key, and creating a first entry in the context table. The first entry is to include first context information identifying the encrypted software component and second context information representing the first cryptographic key. In more specific embodiments, third context information representing a first load address of the encrypted software component is stored in the first entry of the context table.

Cryptographic computing isolation for multi-tenancy and secure software components

Technologies provide domain isolation using encoded pointers to data and code. A system may be configured for decoding an encoded pointer to obtain a linear address of an encrypted code block of a first software component in memory. The first software component shares a linear address space of the memory with a plurality of software components. A processor uses the linear address to access the encrypted code block, determines a relative position of the encrypted code block within a memory slot of the linear address space, and decrypts the encrypted code block to generate a decrypted code block using a code key and a code tweak. The code tweak includes a relative position of the encrypted code block in the address space and domain metadata that uniquely identifies the software component. In some scenarios, the software component may be position independent code and may be relocatable to different address spaces.

Stateless and low-overhead domain isolation using cryptographic computing

A processor, a system, a machine readable medium, and a method. The processor comprises first circuitry to: encrypt a first code image using a first code key; load the encrypted first code image into a memory area allocated in memory for the first code image by an operating system miming on the processor; and send to the operating system a substitute key that corresponds to the first code key, wherein the first code key is concealed from the operating system; and an instruction cache including control circuitry; and second circuitry coupled to the instruction cache, the second circuitry to: receive the substitute key from the operating system; in response to a first request from the operating system to execute the first code image to instantiate a first process, perform a first cryptographic function using a hardware key to generate the first code key from the substitute key; and program the control circuitry of the instruction cache with the first code key to enable the first code image to be decrypted using the first code key.

Cryptographic computing in multitenant environments

The technology described herein includes a first plurality of bijection diffusion function circuits to diffuse data bits into diffused data bits and store the diffused data bits into a memory; an error correcting code (ECC) generation circuit to generate ECC bits for the data bits; and a second plurality of bijection diffusion function circuits to diffuse the ECC bits into diffused ECC bits and store the diffused ECC bits into the memory.

Message authentication Galois integrity and correction (MAGIC) for lightweight row hammer mitigation

In one example, a system for managing encrypted memory comprises a processor to store a first MAC based on data stored in system memory in response to a write operation to the system memory. The processor can also detect a read operation corresponding to the data stored in the system memory, calculate a second MAC based on the data retrieved from the system memory, determine that the second MAC does not match the first MAC, and recalculate the second MAC with a correction operation, wherein the correction operation comprises an XOR operation based on the data retrieved from the system memory and a replacement value for a device of the system memory. Furthermore, the processor can decrypt the data stored in the system memory in response to detecting the recalculated second MAC matches the first MAC and transmit the decrypted data to cache thereby correcting memory errors.

Cryptographic system memory management

A processor is to execute a first instruction to perform a simulated return in a program from a callee function to a caller function based on a first input stack pointer encoded with a first security context of a first callee stack frame. To perform the simulated return is to include generating a first simulated stack pointer to the caller stack frame. The processor is further to, in response to identifying an exception handler in the first caller function, execute a second instruction to perform a simulated call based on a second input stack pointer encoded with a second security context of the caller stack frame. To perform the simulated call is to include generating a second simulated stack pointer to a new stack frame containing an encrypted instruction pointer associated with the exception handler. The second simulated stack pointer is to be encoded with a new security context.

Updating encrypted security context in stack pointers for exception handling and tight bounding of on-stack arguments

The technology disclosed herein comprises a processor; a memory to store data and a plurality of error correcting code (ECC) bits associated with the data; and a memory controller coupled to the memory, the memory controller to receive a write request from the processor and, when an access control field is selected in the write request, perform an exclusive OR (XOR) operation on the plurality of ECC bits and a fixed encoding pattern to generate a plurality of encoded ECC bits and store the data and the plurality of encoded ECC bits in the memory.

Efficient security metadata encoding in error correcting code (ECC) memory without dedicated ECC bits

The technology disclosed herein includes a memory to store a plurality of pages, a page of the plurality of pages configured as one of a trusted execution environment (TEE) configuration and a non-TEE configuration, and a memory controller to attempt to access the page using a memory address and the TEE configuration and generate a first error correcting code (ECC); and when data for the first ECC is at least one of correct and correctable by ECC for the attempt to access the page using the TEE configuration, attempt to access the page using the memory address and the non-TEE configuration and generate a second ECC, and when data the second ECC is at least one of correct and correctable by ECC for the attempt to access the page using the non-TEE configuration, store the memory address as an unknown cacheline address.

Secure error correcting code (ECC) trust execution environment (TEE) configuration metadata encoding

A method comprises generating, for a cacheline, a first tag and a second tag, the first tag and the second tag generated as a function of user data stored and metadata in the cacheline stored in a first memory device, and a multiplication parameter derived from a secret key, storing the user data, the metadata, the first tag and the second tag in the first cacheline of the first memory device; generating, for the cacheline, a third tag and a fourth tag, the third tag and the fourth tag generated as a function of the user data stored and metadata in the cacheline stored in a second memory device, and the multiplication parameter; storing the user data, the metadata, the third tag and the fourth tag in the corresponding cache line of the second memory device; receiving, from a requesting device, a read operation directed to the cacheline; and using the first tag, the second tag, the third tag, and the fourth tag to determine whether a read error occurred during the read operation.

Algebraic and deterministic memory authentication and correction with coupled cacheline metadata

Technologies disclosed herein provide one example of a processor that includes a register to store a first encoded pointer for a first memory allocation for an application and circuitry coupled to memory. Size metadata is stored in first bits of the first encoded pointer and first memory address data associated with the first memory allocation is stored in second bits of the first encoded pointer. The circuitry is configured to determine a first memory address of a first marker region in the first memory allocation, obtain current data from the first marker region at the first memory address, compare the current data to a reference marker stored separately from the first memory allocation, and determine that the first memory allocation is in a first state in response to a determination that the current data corresponds to the reference marker.

Mitigating security vulnerabilities with memory allocation markers in cryptographic computing systems

In one embodiment, an encoded pointer is constructed from a stack pointer that includes offset. The encoded pointer includes the offset value and ciphertext that is based on encrypting a portion of a decorated pointer that includes a maximum offset value. Stack data is encrypted based on the encoded pointer, and the encoded pointer is stored in a stack pointer register of a processor. To access memory, a decoded pointer is constructed based on decrypting the ciphertext of the encoded pointer and the offset value. Encrypted stack data is accessed based on the decoded pointer, and the encrypted stack is decrypted based on the encoded pointer.

Encoded stack pointers

Embodiments are directed to aggregate GHASH-based message authentication code (MAC) over multiple cachelines with incremental updates. An embodiment of a system includes a controller comprising circuitry, the controller to generate an error correction code for a memory line, the memory line comprising a plurality of first data blocks, generate a metadata block corresponding to the memory line, the metadata block comprising the error correction code for the memory line and at least one metadata bit, generate an aggregate GHASH corresponding to a region of memory comprising a cacheline set comprising at least the memory line, encode the first data blocks and the metadata block, encrypt the aggregate GHASH as an aggregate message authentication code (AMAC), provide the encoded first data blocks and the encoded metadata block for storage on a memory module comprising the memory line, and provide the AMAC for storage on a device separate from the memory module.

Aggregate GHASH-based message authentication code (MAC) over multiple cachelines with incremental updates

A processor includes a register to store an encoded pointer to a memory location in memory and the encoded pointer is to include an encrypted portion. The processor further includes circuitry to determine a first data encryption factor based on a first data access instruction, decode the encoded pointer to obtain a memory address of the memory location, use the memory address to access an encrypted first data element, and decrypt the encrypted first data element using a cryptographic algorithm with first inputs to generate a decrypted first data element. The first inputs include the first data encryption factor based on the first data access instruction and a second data encryption factor from the encoded pointer.

Data type based cryptographic computing

A processor includes a register to store an encoded pointer to a variable in stack memory. The encoded pointer includes an encrypted portion and a fixed plaintext portion of a memory address corresponding to the variable. The processor further includes circuitry to, in response to a memory access request for associated with the variable, decrypt the encrypted portion of the encoded pointer to obtain first upper address bits of the memory address and a memory allocation size for a variable, decode the encoded pointer to obtain the memory address, verify the memory address is valid based, at least in part on the memory allocation size, and in response to determining that the memory address is valid, allow the memory access request.

Fine-grained stack protection using cryptographic computing

Growing community of inventors

Hillsboro, OR, United States of America

Karanvir S Grewal