New DDRop Attack Breaks Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP Confidential Computing

Summary: Researchers at KU Leuven, ETH Zurich, Durham University, and Google disclosed DDRop, a hardware attack that silently drops writes to server memory so Intel TDX, Intel Scalable SGX, and AMD SEV-SNP processors read stale encrypted data as current. It requires an attacker who controls the server's software and briefly accesses the machine to fit an interposer between processor and memory module, built for about $159 in parts, and the team is releasing board designs, firmware, and attack code on GitHub ahead of ACM CCS 2026 in November.
Bottom line: On Intel TDX the researchers read a victim virtual machine's private memory, switched it into debug mode, and forged its launch measurement, so a machine the attacker controls could pass a remote customer's trust check. Intel and AMD both place physical attacks outside their threat models, and the researchers say there is no simple patch because the fix requires new memory-encryption hardware with a freshness check.

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