Related papers: Restricting Control Flow During Speculative Execut…
Modern computer processors use microarchitectural optimization mechanisms to improve performance. As a downside, such optimizations are prone to introducing side-channel vulnerabilities. Speculative loading of memory, called prefetching, is…
Out-of-order execution and speculative execution are among the biggest contributors to performance and efficiency of modern processors. However, they are inconsiderate, leaking secret data during the transient execution of instructions.…
Transient execution attacks utilize micro-architectural covert channels to leak secrets that should not have been accessible during logical program execution. Commonly used micro-architectural covert channels are those that leave lasting…
Recent work has shown that out-of-order and speculative execution mechanisms used to increase performance in the majority of processors expose the processors to critical attacks. These attacks, called Meltdown and Spectre, exploit the side…
Autoregressive language models suffer from high inference latency due to their sequential decoding nature. Speculative decoding (SD) mitigates this by employing a lightweight draft model to propose candidate tokens, which are selectively…
SPEculative Execution side Channel Hardware (SPEECH) Vulnerabilities have enabled the notorious Meltdown, Spectre, and L1 terminal fault (L1TF) attacks. While a number of studies have reported different variants of SPEECH vulnerabilities,…
The prevalence of memory corruption bugs in the past decades resulted in numerous defenses, such as stack canaries, control flow integrity (CFI), and memory safe languages. These defenses can prevent entire classes of vulnerabilities, and…
Reasoning about correctness and security of software is increasingly difficult due to the complexity of modern microarchitectural features such as out-of-order execution. A class of security vulnerabilities termed Spectre that exploits side…
To improve the overall performance of processors, computer architects use various performance optimization techniques in modern processors, such as speculative execution, branch prediction, and chaotic execution. Both now and in the future,…
Control flow obfuscation deters software reverse engineering attempts by altering the program's control flow transfer. The alternation should not affect the software's run-time behaviour. In this paper, we propose a control flow obfuscation…
The disclosure of the Spectre speculative-execution attacks in January 2018 has left a severe vulnerability that systems are still struggling with how to patch. The solutions that currently exist tend to have incomplete coverage, perform…
Existing speculative execution attacks are limited to breaching confidentiality of data beyond privilege boundary, the so-called spectre-type attacks. All of them utilize the changes in microarchitectural buffers made by the speculative…
As Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly integrated into software development workflows, they also become prime targets for adversarial attacks. Among these, backdoor attacks are a significant threat, allowing attackers to…
Speculative execution attacks undermine the security of constant-time programming, the standard technique used to prevent microarchitectural side channels in security-sensitive software such as cryptographic code. Constant-time code must…
Malicious encryption techniques continue to evolve, bypassing conventional detection mechanisms that rely on static signatures or predefined behavioral rules. Spectral analysis presents an alternative approach that transforms system…
In this paper, we explore a new, yet critical, side-channel attack against Intel Software Guard Extension (SGX), called a branch shadowing attack, which can reveal fine-grained control flows (i.e., each branch) of an enclave program running…
Speculative execution is crucial in enhancing modern processor performance but can introduce Spectre-type vulnerabilities that may leak sensitive information. Detecting Spectre gadgets from programs has been a research focus to enhance the…
Spectre, Meltdown, and related attacks have demonstrated that kernels, hypervisors, trusted execution environments, and browsers are prone to information disclosure through micro-architectural weaknesses. However, it remains unclear as to…
In this paper, we present NetSpectre, a generic remote Spectre variant 1 attack. For this purpose, we demonstrate the first access-driven remote Evict+Reload cache attack over network, leaking 15 bits per hour. Beyond retrofitting existing…
The rise of hardware-level security threats, such as side-channel attacks, hardware Trojans, and firmware vulnerabilities, demands advanced detection mechanisms that are more intelligent and adaptive. Traditional methods often fall short in…