NanoZone: Scalable, Efficient, and Secure Memory Protection for Arm CCA

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07034v1
• Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2025 07:55:48 GMT
• Title: NanoZone: Scalable, Efficient, and Secure Memory Protection for Arm CCA
• Authors: Shiqi Liu, Yongpeng Gao, Mingyang Zhang, Jie Wang,
• Abstract summary: Arm Confidential Computing Architecture (CCA) currently isolates at the granularity of an entire Confidential Virtual Machine (CVM)<n>We extend CCA with a three-tier zone model that spawns an unlimited number of lightweight isolation domains inside a single process.<n>To block domain-switch abuse, we also add a fast user-level Code-Pointer Integrity (CPI) mechanism.
• Score: 4.597444093276292
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Arm Confidential Computing Architecture (CCA) currently isolates at the granularity of an entire Confidential Virtual Machine (CVM), leaving intra-VM bugs such as Heartbleed unmitigated. The state-of-the-art narrows this to the process level, yet still cannot stop attacks that pivot within the same process, and prior intra-enclave schemes are either too slow or incompatible with CVM-style isolation. We extend CCA with a three-tier zone model that spawns an unlimited number of lightweight isolation domains inside a single process, while shielding them from kernel-space adversaries. To block domain-switch abuse, we also add a fast user-level Code-Pointer Integrity (CPI) mechanism. We developed two prototypes: a functional version on Arm's official simulator to validate resistance against intra-process and kernel-space adversaries, and a performance variant on Arm development boards evaluated for session-key isolation within server applications, in-memory key-value protection, and non-volatile-memory data isolation. NanoZone incurs roughly a 20% performance overhead while retaining 95% throughput compared to the system without fine-grained isolation.

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