Related papers: Rowhammer.js: A Remote Software-Induced Fault Atta…

Recent research has demonstrated that Intel's SGX is vulnerable to software-based side-channel attacks. In a common attack, the adversary monitors CPU caches to infer secret-dependent data accesses patterns. Known defenses have major…

In-memory computing architectures provide a much needed solution to energy-efficiency barriers posed by Von-Neumann computing due to the movement of data between the processor and the memory. Functions implemented in such in-memory…

The initial location of data in DRAMs is determined and controlled by the 'address-mapping' and even modern memory controllers use a fixed and run-time-agnostic address mapping. On the other hand, the memory access pattern seen at the…

Embedded systems permeate through nearly all aspects of modern society. From cars to refrigerators to nuclear refineries, securing these systems has never been more important. Intrusions, such as the Stuxnet malware which broke the…

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems respond to queries by retrieving relevant documents from a knowledge database and applying an LLM to the retrieved documents. We demonstrate that RAG systems that operate on databases with…

Large Language Models (LLMs) enhanced with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) have shown improved performance in generating accurate responses. However, the dependence on external knowledge bases introduces potential security…

Modern DRAM is vulnerable to read disturbance (e.g., RowHammer and RowPress) that significantly undermines the robust operation of the system. Repeatedly opening and closing a DRAM row (RowHammer) or keeping a DRAM row open for a long…

Adversaries with physical access to a target platform can perform cold boot or DMA attacks to extract sensitive data from the RAM. In response, several main-memory encryption schemes have been proposed to prevent such attacks. Also hardware…

In this paper, we take a deep dive into microarchitectural security from a hardware designer's perspective by reviewing the existing approaches to detect hardware vulnerabilities during the design phase. We show that a protection gap…

We experimentally demonstrate the effects of read disturbance (RowHammer and RowPress) and uncover the inner workings of undocumented read disturbance defense mechanisms in High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). Detailed characterization of six real…

Ransomware attack effectiveness has increased causing far reaching consequences that are not fully understood. The ability to disrupt core services, the global reach, extended duration, and the repetition has increased their ability to harm…

DRAM-based memory is a critical factor that creates a bottleneck on the system performance since the processor speed largely outperforms the DRAM latency. In this thesis, we develop a low-cost mechanism, called ChargeCache, which enables…

WebAssembly (Wasm) is a next-generation portable compilation target for deploying applications written in high-level languages on the web. In order to protect their memory from untrusted code, web browser engines confine the execution of…

In many cases of attacks or failures, memory effects play a significant role. Therefore, we present a model that not only considers the dependencies between nodes but also incorporates the memory effects of attacks. Our research…

Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) is the prevalent memory technology used to build main memory systems of almost all computers. A fundamental shortcoming of DRAM is the need to refresh memory cells to keep stored data intact. DRAM refresh…

Virtual switches have become popular among cloud operating systems to interconnect virtual machines in a more flexible manner. However, this paper demonstrates that virtual switches introduce new attack surfaces in cloud setups, whose…

Memory makes LLM-based web agents personalized, powerful, yet exploitable. By storing past interactions to personalize future tasks, agents inadvertently create a persistent attack surface that spans websites and sessions. While existing…

Oblivious RAM protocols (ORAMs) allow a client to access data from an untrusted storage device without revealing the access patterns. Typically, the ORAM adversary can observe both read and write accesses. Write-only ORAMs target a more…

In real-time embedded systems (RTS), failures due to security breaches can cause serious damage to the system, the environment and/or injury to humans. Therefore, it is very important to understand the potential threats and attacks against…

Micro-architectural attacks use information leaked through shared resources to break hardware-enforced isolation. These attacks have been used to steal private information ranging from cryptographic keys to privileged Operating System (OS)…