Biblio

Hardware-assisted isolation technology provide a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) for the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) of a system. Since there is no standardization for such systems, many technologies using different approaches have been implemented over time. Before selecting or implementing a TEE, it is essential to understand the security architecture, features and analyze the technologies with respect to the new security vulnerabilities (i.e. Micro-architectural class of vulnerabilities). These technologies can be divided into two main types: 1) Isolation by software virtualization and 2) Isolation by hardware. In this paper, we discuss technology implementation of each type i.e. Intel SGX and ARM TrustZone for type-1; Intel ME and AMD Secure Processor for type-2. We also cover the vulnerability analysis against each technology with respect to the latest discovered attacks. This would enable a user to precisely appreciate the security capabilities of each technology.