Pandora's Box in Your SSD: The Untold Dangers of NVMe

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wertenbroek, Rick, Dassatti, Alberto
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Wertenbroek, Rick
Dassatti, Alberto
author_facet Wertenbroek, Rick
Dassatti, Alberto
contents Modern operating systems manage and abstract hardware resources, to ensure efficient execution of user workloads. The operating system must securely interface with often untrusted user code while relying on hardware that is assumed to be trustworthy. In this paper, we challenge this trust by introducing the eNVMe platform, a malicious NVMe storage device. The eNVMe platform features a novel, Linux-based, open-source NVMe firmware. It embeds hacking tools and it is compatible with a variety of PCI-enabled hardware. Using this platform, we uncover several attack vectors in Linux and Windows, highlighting the risks posed by malicious NVMe devices. We discuss available mitigation techniques and ponder about open-source firmware and open-hardware as a viable way forward for storage. While prior research has examined compromised existing hardware, our eNVMe platform provides a novel and unique tool for security researchers, enabling deeper exploration of vulnerabilities in operating system storage subsystems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_00439
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Pandora's Box in Your SSD: The Untold Dangers of NVMe
Wertenbroek, Rick
Dassatti, Alberto
Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
K.6.5; H.3.4; J.7
Modern operating systems manage and abstract hardware resources, to ensure efficient execution of user workloads. The operating system must securely interface with often untrusted user code while relying on hardware that is assumed to be trustworthy. In this paper, we challenge this trust by introducing the eNVMe platform, a malicious NVMe storage device. The eNVMe platform features a novel, Linux-based, open-source NVMe firmware. It embeds hacking tools and it is compatible with a variety of PCI-enabled hardware. Using this platform, we uncover several attack vectors in Linux and Windows, highlighting the risks posed by malicious NVMe devices. We discuss available mitigation techniques and ponder about open-source firmware and open-hardware as a viable way forward for storage. While prior research has examined compromised existing hardware, our eNVMe platform provides a novel and unique tool for security researchers, enabling deeper exploration of vulnerabilities in operating system storage subsystems.
title Pandora's Box in Your SSD: The Untold Dangers of NVMe
topic Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
K.6.5; H.3.4; J.7
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00439