Source · Tier A · Peer-reviewedSource · StackWarp: Breaking AMD SEV-SNP Integrity via Deterministic Stack-Pointer Manipulation through the CPU's Stack Engine
StackWarp: Breaking AMD SEV-SNP Integrity via Deterministic Stack-Pointer Manipulation through the CPU's Stack Engine
R. Zhang, T. Hornetz, D. Weber, F. Thomas, M. Schwarz. 2026. 35th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '26).
| Original | https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity26/presentation/zhang-ruiyi |
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| Version | USENIX Security '26 presentation page (pp. 5691–5709, August 2026). Also read the authors' site (https://stackwarpattack.com/) and paper PDF (https://stackwarpattack.com/stackwarp_usenix26.pdf) on 2026-09-25. |
| Accessed | 2026-09-25 |
| Note | Independent attack paper (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security). A malicious hypervisor toggles an undocumented MSR bit on a sibling hyperthread to shift an SEV-SNP guest's stack pointer, breaking the guest's integrity; demonstrated on AMD Zen 1 to Zen 5 with simultaneous multithreading enabled, including OpenSSH authentication bypass, sudo privilege escalation and RSA key recovery. CVE-2025-29943; AMD released hot-loadable microcode patches (bulletin AMD-SB-3027), and disabling SMT is an interim mitigation. Proof-of-concept code at https://github.com/cispa/StackWarp. |