DDRop Attack Exposes Vulnerabilities in Intel and AMD Confidential Computing

• •DDRop attack targets Intel TDX and AMD SEV systems, requiring physical access.
• •The attack exploits a design flaw in memory encryption that lacks freshness checks.
• •Researchers will release the interposer design and attack code as open-source.

Researchers have unveiled a hardware attack named DDRop that compromises memory protection in Intel TDX and AMD SEV systems. This attack allows an attacker with physical access to a server to insert a low-cost interposer, which drops write commands to memory, enabling the processor to read outdated encrypted data. The attack exploits a design flaw that omits a freshness guarantee in scalable memory encryption hardware. The interposer, costing under $200, can be built and deployed to manipulate memory operations in real-time. Affected systems include cloud services that rely on these technologies for confidential computing. The research team, comprising members from KU Leuven, ETH Zurich, Durham University, and Google, plans to present their findings at the ACM CCS 2026 conference in November and will release the interposer's design as open-source hardware. The attack poses a significant risk to data integrity in cloud environments, particularly for organizations relying on these trusted execution environments.