Skip to content
Main menu
  • Main page
  • Discover
  • Unexpected connections
  • Topics
  • Random article
  • Search
Your library
  • Saved articles
  • Recent discoveries
  • Rabbit-hole trails
Topic areas
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics
  • Physics
  • Engineering
  • Biology
  • Economics
  • Curiosities
WikiholeDeeper into Wikipedia
EnglishEN
  • Saved
  • History

  • Article text and media come live from Wikipedia via the official MediaWiki API and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply. Each article links to its source and revision.
  • WikiHole is an independent project and is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • How ranking works
  • All topics
  • Reading history
  • Random article
  • MediaWiki API

Software Guard Extensions

  • Article
  • Rabbit hole
  • Read
  • View history
Tools
Actions
  • Read
  • View history
General
  • Recent changes
  • Related articles
  • Random discovery
This article
Reading time
10 min
Topic
Computer Science
Quality
C-class
Views
653 in 14 days
Last edited
25 Feb 2026
Print/export
  • Printable version
In other projects
  • Wikidata item
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rabbit hole:
  1. Software Guard Extensions

Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) is a set of instruction codes implementing trusted execution environment that are built into some Intel central processing units (CPUs). They allow user-level and operating system code to define protected private regions of memory, called enclaves.12 SGX is designed to be useful for implementing secure remote computation, secure web browsing, and digital rights management (DRM).3 Other applications include concealment of proprietary algorithms and of encryption keys.4

SGX involves encryption by the CPU of a portion of memory (the enclave). Data and code originating in the enclave are decrypted on the fly within the CPU, protecting them from being examined or read by other code, including code running at higher such as the and any underlying . While this can mitigate many kinds of attacks, it does not protect against .

4
4
privilege levels
operating system
hypervisors
1
4
2
side-channel attacks
5

A pivot by Intel in 2021 resulted in the deprecation of SGX from the 11th and 12th generation Intel Core processors, but development continues on Intel Xeon for cloud and enterprise use.67

Loading the rest of the article…

Recent changes

Rabbit hole

Where Software Guard Extensions leads. Every connection below has a source: a link in this article, a shared Wikipedia category, or CirrusSearch text similarity. Articles already on your trail are left out.

Contents
  • (Top)
  • Details
  • List of SGX vulnerabilities
  • SGX malware arguments
  • See also
  • References
  • External links
  • Recent changes
  • Rabbit hole
Contents
Contents8 sections
  • (Top)
  • Details
  • List of SGX vulnerabilities
  • Prime+Probe attack
  • Spectre-like attack
  • Enclave attack
  • MicroScope replay attack
  • Plundervolt
  • LVI
  • SGAxe
  • ÆPIC leak
  • SGX malware arguments
  • See also
  • References
  • External links
  • Recent changes
  • Rabbit hole
Study aids for Software Guard Extensions

Terminology

Intel Software Guard Extensions
Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) is a set of instruction codes implementing trusted execution environment that are built into some Intel central processing units (CPUs).
SGX
Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) is a set of instruction codes implementing trusted execution environment that are built into some Intel central processing units (CPUs).
enclaves
They allow user-level and operating system code to define protected private regions of memory, called enclaves.

Terms the article defines in bold, quoted in context.

Categories:
  • Intel
  • X86 instructions
  • Cybersecurity engineering
  • Instruction set extensions

1,111 words · 43 references · revision 1340352328 · CC BY-SA 4.0

General
  • Recent changes
  • Related articles
  • Random discovery
This article
Reading time
10 min
Topic
Computer Science
Quality
C-class
Views
653 in 14 days
Last edited
25 Feb 2026

Key concepts

  • Side-channel attack3
  • Operating system2
  • Intel Core2
  • Instruction code1
  • Trusted execution environment1
  • Intel1
  • Central processing unit1
  • User-level1
  • Remote desktop software1
  • Web browsing1

The articles this one links to most, weighted towards the introduction.

Print/export
  • Printable version
In other projects
  • Wikidata item

Details

SGX was first introduced in 2015 with the sixth generation Intel Core microprocessors based on the Skylake microarchitecture.

Support for SGX in the CPU is indicated in CPUID "Structured Extended feature Leaf", EBX bit 02,8 but its availability to applications requires BIOS/UEFI support and opt-in enabling which is not reflected in CPUID bits. This complicates the feature detection logic for applications.9

Emulation of SGX was added to an experimental version of the QEMU system emulator in 2014.10 In 2015, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology released an open-source simulator named "OpenSGX".11

One example of SGX used in security was a demo application from wolfSSL12 using it for cryptography algorithms.

Intel Goldmont Plus (Gemini Lake) microarchitecture also contains support for Intel SGX.13

Both in the 11th and 12th generations of Intel Core processors, SGX is listed as "Deprecated" and thereby not supported on "client platform" processors.61415 This removed support of playing Ultra HD Blu-ray discs on officially licensed software, such as PowerDVD.161718

List of SGX vulnerabilities

Prime+Probe attack

On 27 March 2017 researchers at Austria's Graz University of Technology developed a proof-of-concept that can grab RSA keys from SGX enclaves running on the same system within five minutes by using certain CPU instructions in lieu of a fine-grained timer to exploit cache DRAM side-channels.1920 One countermeasure for this type of attack was presented and published by Daniel Gruss et al. at the USENIX Security Symposium in 2017.21 Among other published countermeasures, one countermeasure to this type of attack was published on September 28, 2017, a compiler-based tool, DR.SGX,22 that claims to have superior performance with the elimination of the implementation complexity of other proposed solutions.

Spectre-like attack

Main article: Spectre (security vulnerability)

The LSDS group at Imperial College London showed a proof of concept that the Spectre speculative execution security vulnerability can be adapted to attack the secure enclave.23 The Foreshadow attack, disclosed in August 2018, combines speculative execution and buffer overflow to bypass the SGX.24 A security advisory and mitigation for this attack, also called an L1 Terminal Fault, was originally issued on August 14, 2018 and updated May 11, 2021.

SGX malware arguments

There has been a long debate on whether SGX enables creation of superior malware. Oxford University researchers published an article in October 202243 considering attackers' potential advantages and disadvantages by abusing SGX for malware development. Researchers conclude that while there might be temporary zero-day vulnerabilities to abuse in SGX ecosystem, the core principles and design features of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) make malware weaker than a malware-in-the-wild, TEEs make no major contributions to malware otherwise.

See also

  • Intel TDX
  • Intel MPX
  • Spectre-NG
  • Speculative execution CPU vulnerabilities

References

  1. 1"Intel SGX for Dummies (Intel SGX Design Objectives)". intel.com. 2013-09-26. Archived from the original on 2014-04-29. Retrieved 2015-04-20.
  2. 2johnm (2017-08-08). "Properly Detecting Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) in Your Applications". software.intel.com. Archived from the original on 2019-04-24. Retrieved 2019-02-15.
  3. 3"Intel SGX Details". intel.com. 2017-07-05.
  4. 4"Researchers Use Intel SGX To Put Malware Beyond the Reach of Antivirus Software - Slashdot". it.slashdot.org. 12 February 2019. Archived from the original on 26 October 2021. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  5. 5"Intel SGX and Side-Channels". intel.com. 2020-02-28. from the original on 2020-02-28. Retrieved 2020-02-28.

External links

  • Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) / ISA Extensions, Intel
    • Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) Programming Reference , Intel, October 2014
    • IDF 2015 - Tech Chat: A Primer on Intel Software Guard Extensions , Intel (poster)
    • ISCA 2015 tutorial slides for Intel SGX , Intel, June 2015
  • McKeen, Frank, et al. (Intel), Innovative Instructions and Software Model for Isolated Execution // Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Hardware and Architectural Support for Security and Privacy. ACM, 2013.
  • Jackson, Alon, (PhD dissertation). Trust is in the Keys of the Beholder: Extending SGX Autonomy and Anonymity, May 2017.
  • Joanna Rutkowska, Thoughts on Intel's upcoming Software Guard Extensions (Part 1), August 2013
  • SGX: the good, the bad and the downright ugly / Shaun Davenport, Richard Ford (Florida Institute of Technology) / Virus Bulletin, 2014-01-07
  • Victor Costan and Srinivas Devadas, Intel SGX Explained, January 2016.
  • wolfSSL, October 2016.
  • / Professor Yehuda Lindell (Bar Ilan University & Unbound Tech), January 2018
25

Enclave attack

On 8 February 2019, researchers at Austria's Graz University of Technology published findings which showed that in some cases it is possible to run malicious code from within the enclave itself.26 The exploit involves scanning through process memory in order to reconstruct a payload, which can then run code on the system. The paper claims that due to the confidential and protected nature of the enclave, it is impossible for antivirus software to detect and remove malware residing within it. Intel issued a statement, stating that this attack was outside the threat model of SGX, that they cannot guarantee that code run by the user comes from trusted sources, and urged consumers to only run trusted code.27

MicroScope replay attack

There is a proliferation of side-channel attacks plaguing modern computer architectures. Many of these attacks measure slight, nondeterministic variations in the execution of code, so the attacker needs many measurements (possibly tens of thousands) to learn secrets. However, the MicroScope attack allows a malicious OS to replay code an arbitrary number of times regardless of the program's actual structure, enabling dozens of side-channel attacks.28 In July 2022, Intel submitted a Linux patch called AEX-Notify to allow the SGX enclave programmer to write a handler for these types of events.29

Plundervolt

Security researchers were able to inject timing specific faults into execution within the enclave, resulting in leakage of information. The attack can be executed remotely, but requires access to the privileged control of the processor's voltage and frequency.30 A security advisory and mitigation for this attack was originally issued on August 14, 2018 and updated on March 20, 2020.31

LVI

Main article: Load value injection

Load Value Injection3233 injects data into a program aiming to replace the value loaded from memory which is then used for a short time before the mistake is spotted and rolled back, during which LVI controls data and control flow. A security advisory and mitigation for this attack was originally issued on March 10, 2020 and updated on May 11, 2021.34

SGAxe

SGAxe,35 an SGX vulnerability published in 2020, extends a speculative execution attack on cache,36 leaking content of the enclave. This allows an attacker to access private CPU keys used for remote attestation.37 In other words, a threat actor can bypass Intel's countermeasures to breach SGX enclaves' confidentiality. The SGAxe attack is carried out by extracting attestation keys from SGX's private quoting enclave that are signed by Intel. The attacker can then masquerade as legitimate Intel machines by signing arbitrary SGX attestation quotes.38 A security advisory and mitigation for this attack, also called a Processor Data Leakage or Cache Eviction, was originally issued January 27, 2020 and updated May 11, 2021.39

ÆPIC leak

In 2022, security researchers discovered a vulnerability in the Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) that allows for an attacker with root/admin privileges to gain access to encryption keys via the APIC by inspecting data transfers from L1 and L2 cache.40 This vulnerability is the first architectural attack discovered on x86 CPUs. This differs from Spectre and Meltdown which use a noisy side channel. This exploit currently affects Intel Core 10th, 11th and 12th generations, and Xeon Ice Lake microprocessors.4142

Archived
  • 6"New Intel chips won't play Blu-ray disks due to SGX deprecation". Archived from the original on 2022-01-16. Retrieved 2022-01-17.
  • 7anrilr (2022-01-20). "Rising to the Challenge — Data Security with Intel Confidential Computing". community.intel.com. Archived from the original on 2022-05-19. Retrieved 2022-04-20.
  • 8Intel Architecture Instruction Set Extensions Programming Reference Archived 2015-09-28 at the Wayback Machine, Intel, AUGUST 2015, page 36 "Structured Extended feature Leaf EAX=07h, EBX Bit 02: SGX"
  • 9"Properly Detecting Intel Software Guard Extensions in Your Applications". intel.com. 2016-05-13. Archived from the original on 2019-04-24. Retrieved 2016-05-13.
  • 10"Intel SGX Emulation using QEMU" (PDF). tc.gtisc.gatech.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-02.
  • 11"sslab-gatech/opensgx". GitHub. Archived from the original on 2018-06-11. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  • 12"wolfSSL At IDF". wolfssl. 2016-08-11.
  • 13"Intel® Pentium® Silver J5005 Processor". Retrieved 2020-07-10.
  • 14"11th Generation Intel Core Processor Datasheet". Retrieved 2022-01-15.
  • 15"12th Generation Intel Core Processors Datasheet". Retrieved 2022-01-15.
  • 16Mary Stone (January 21, 2022). "Intel discontinues support for UHD Blu-ray discs in its newest PC chips". whathifi. Archived from the original on March 22, 2023. Retrieved December 8, 2022.
  • 17"CyberLink Support Center".
  • 18"CyberLink Support Center". www.cyberlink.com. Retrieved 11 September 2024.
  • 19Chirgwin, Richard (March 7, 2017). "Boffins show Intel's SGX can leak crypto keys". The Register. Archived from the original on 11 July 2019. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  • 20Schwarz, Michael; Weiser, Samuel; Gruss, Daniel; Maurice, Clémentine; Mangard, Stefan (2017). "Malware Guard Extension: Using SGX to Conceal Cache Attacks". arXiv:1702.08719 [cs.CR].
  • 21"Strong and Efficient Cache Side-Channel Protection using Hardware Transactional Memory" (PDF). USENIX. 2017-08-16. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-07-27. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  • 22Brasser, Ferdinand; Capkun, Srdjan; Dmitrienko, Alexandra; Frassetto, Tommaso; Kostiainen, Kari; Müller, Urs; Sadeghi, Ahmad-Reza (2017-09-28). DR.SGX: Hardening SGX Enclaves against Cache Attacks with Data Location Randomization. ACSAC '19: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference December 2019. pp. 788–800. arXiv:1709.09917. doi:10.1145/3359789.3359809. S2CID 19364841.
  • 23Sample code demonstrating a Spectre-like attack against an Intel SGX enclave., 19 December 2021, archived from the original on 7 May 2020, retrieved 12 January 2018
  • 24Peter Bright - Jul 10, 2018 9:00 pm UTC (2018-07-10). "New Spectre-like attack uses speculative execution to overflow buffers". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 2018-11-23. Retrieved 2018-11-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  • 25"CVE - CVE-2018-3615". cve.mitre.org. Archived from the original on 2022-10-17. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
  • 26Schwarz, Michael; Weiser, Samuel; Gruss, Daniel (2019-02-08). "Practical Enclave Malware with Intel SGX". arXiv:1902.03256 [cs.CR].
  • 27Bright, Peter (2019-02-12). "Researchers use Intel SGX to put malware beyond the reach of antivirus software". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 2019-02-15. Retrieved 2019-02-15.
  • 28Skarlatos, Dimitrios; Yan, Mengjia; Gopireddy, Bhargava; Sprabery, Read; Torrellas, Josep; Fletcher, Christopher W. (2019). "MicroScope". Proceedings of the 46th International Symposium on Computer Architecture. Isca '19. Phoenix, Arizona: ACM Press. pp. 318–331. doi:10.1145/3307650.3322228. ISBN 978-1-4503-6669-4.
  • 29"[PATCH] x86/sgx: Allow enclaves to use Asynchrounous Exit Notification". lore.kernel.org. Archived from the original on 2022-10-17. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
  • 30"Plundervolt steals keys from cryptographic algorithms". Rambus Blog. 2019-12-11. Archived from the original on 2021-10-23. Retrieved 2020-03-20.
  • 31"CVE - CVE-2019-11157". cve.mitre.org. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
  • 32"LVI: Hijacking Transient Execution with Load Value Injection". lviattack.eu. Archived from the original on 2022-01-01. Retrieved 2020-03-12.
  • 33"Load Value Injection". software.intel.com. Archived from the original on 2020-07-12. Retrieved 2020-03-12.
  • 34"CVE - CVE-2020-0551". cve.mitre.org. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
  • 35"SGAxe". sgaxe.com. Archived from the original on 2020-06-10. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  • 36"CacheOut". cacheoutattack.com.
  • 37"Towards Formalization of Enhanced Privacy ID (EPID)-based Remote Attestation in Intel SGX".
  • 38"SGAxe & CrossTalk Attacks: New Intel SGX Vulnerability Leaks Data". Hack Reports. 2020-06-12. Archived from the original on 2020-07-16. Retrieved 2020-06-12.
  • 39"CVE - CVE-2020-0549". cve.mitre.org. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
  • 40"Intel SGX: Not So Safe After All, ÆPIC Leak". The New Stack. 2022-08-16. Archived from the original on 2022-08-29. Retrieved 2022-08-29.
  • 41Wilson, Jason R. (2022-08-11). "ÆPIC Leak is an Architectural CPU Bug Affecting 10th, 11th, and 12th Gen Intel Core CPUs". Wccftech. Archived from the original on 2022-08-29. Retrieved 2022-08-29.
  • 42"ÆPIC Leak". aepicleak.com. Archived from the original on 2022-08-29. Retrieved 2022-08-29.
  • 43Küçük, Kubilay Ahmet; et, al. (October 2022). "SoK: How 'Not' to Architect Your Next-Generation TEE Malware". Hardware and Architectural Support for Security and Privacy (HASP) 2022. Archived from the original on 2023-04-21. Retrieved 2023-04-17.
    • The Security of Intel SGX for Key Protection and Data Privacy Applications
  • Intel SGX Technology and the Impact of Processor Side-Channel Attacks, March 2020
  • How Confidential Computing Delivers A Personalised Shopping Experience, January 2021
  • Realising the Potential of Data Whilst Preserving Privacy with EyA and Conclave from R3, December 2021
  • Introduction to Intel Software Guard Extensions, June 2020
    • Created
    20 Apr 2015
    History
    229 edits
    159 contributors
    No edits in the last 30 days
    Last edited
    25 Feb 2026

    229 revisions in total · 159 contributors

    1. 25 Feb 2026, 06:06 UTCWrenFalconmUndid revision 1325658498 by ~2025-38002-24 (talk)−38diff
    2. 4 Dec 2025, 19:12 UTCDurbatuluk1701m§ See also Added relevant TDX link+40diff
    3. 4 Dec 2025, 11:30 UTCTemporary accountreverted§ List of SGX vulnerabilities+38diff
    4. 28 Nov 2025, 12:56 UTCTemporary account§ Extraction of the private key The claims are bold but the reference doesn't support it.−484diff
    5. 11 Oct 2025, 00:53 UTCSchlurcherBotmBot: http → https+2diff
    6. 17 Aug 2025, 02:32 UTCAnomieBOTmDating maintenance tags: {{Whosays}}+17diff
    7. 17 Aug 2025, 00:32 UTCAnonymous contributor§ SGX malware arguments+11diff
    8. 16 Aug 2025, 04:16 UTCVulcanSphereRescuing 26 sources and tagging 0 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0.9.5+4,864diff

    View full revision history

    Created
    20 Apr 2015
    History
    229 edits
    159 contributors
    No edits in the last 30 days
    Last edited
    25 Feb 2026

    Related articles are unavailable right now.

    Wikipedia is rate limiting us right now. Try again in a minute.