Hardware-Based Attacks on Secure Enclaves and Embedded Devices

Security researchers have demonstrated new hardware-based techniques to extract sensitive data from devices previously considered secure, including smartwatches and confidential computing servers. In one case, analysts revived the 'Blinkenlights' technique, adapting it to modern TFT screens to extract firmware from a budget smartwatch by exploiting a dial parser vulnerability. This allowed arbitrary memory content to be displayed on the device's screen, which was then captured using a high-speed Raspberry Pi Pico setup. The smartwatch, which contained fake health sensors and used a JieLi AC6958C6 system-on-chip, was found to have weak authentication and a flawed firmware parser, enabling the out-of-bounds read attack.

Separately, researchers from KU Leuven University presented a low-cost hardware attack called 'Battering RAM' at Black Hat Europe 2025, which targets secure CPU enclaves such as Intel SGX and AMD SEV. By using a $50 DDR4 interposer, the researchers manipulated memory address mapping at runtime, bypassing firmware mitigations and gaining unauthorized access to encrypted memory. This allowed them to extract platform provisioning keys, forge attestation reports, and implant persistent backdoors on protected virtual machines, raising concerns about the security of cloud infrastructures relying on these technologies.