Researchers use virtual machine for cloud crypto key attack

Computer scientists at the University of North Carolina have constructed (pdf) a system whereby a malicious virtual machine is used in a so-called access-driven side-channel attack for the first time.

Running on the Xen hypervisor, the attack succeeded in extracting an ElGamal decryption key from a victim virtual machine using the most recent version of the libgcrypt cryptographic library, the researchers wrote.