Hacking The Cell Architecture

Presentation done at Hack In The Box Conference in Dubai, April 17th 2008, covering technical aspects of the CBEA (Cell Broadband Engine Architecture), new microprocessor developed by STI (Sony, Toshiba and IBM)

Abstract:

This presentation intend to cover security aspects related to a new architecture, widely deployed and used called Cell. The architecture itself will be deeply explained, focusing the security concerns that appear in this kind of asymmetric multi-core systems. While Cell architecture is used in the new playstation 3, it´s also used in big blade machines . During the presentation, focus will be given to Linux running in that machines, since it´s the recommended OS for this architecture.