PMFault: Voltage Fault Injection on Server Platforms Through the PMBus

Hardware-based attacks like voltage glitching have been a threat to embedded processors like smartcards for decades. More recently, attacks like Clkscrew, Plundervolt, VoltJockey, and V0ltPwn, have shown that desktop and server processors are equally vulnerable to voltage fault injection. Controlling the built-in power management features from software, those attacks break the security guarantees of trusted execution environments like Intel SGX or ARM TrustZone. In this talk, we look at a related, yet so-far overlooked attack surface - the PMBus - that is widely used on server motherboards for power monitoring and management.... By: Zitai Chen , David Oswald Full Abstract and Presentation Materials: #pmfault-voltage-fault-injection-on-server-platforms-through-the-pmbus-30361