Related papers: An Exploratory Analysis of Microcode as a Building…

Verifying integrity of software execution in low-end micro-controller units (MCUs) is a well-known open problem. The central challenge is how to securely detect software exploits with minimal overhead, since these MCUs are designed for low…

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are widespread in critical domains, and significant damage can be caused if an attacker is able to modify the code of their programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Unfortunately, traditional techniques for…

Side-channel attacks on microprocessors, like the RISC-V, exhibit security vulnerabilities that lead to several design challenges. Hence, it is imperative to study and analyze these security vulnerabilities comprehensively. In this paper,…

The recent Spectre attacks have demonstrated that modern microarchitectural optimizations can make software insecure. These attacks use features like pipelining, out-of-order and speculation to extract information about the memory contents…

Efficient, reliable trapping of execution in a program at the desired location is a linchpin technique for dynamic malware analysis. The progression of debuggers and malware is akin to a game of cat and mouse - each are constantly in a…

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…

This paper describes an `obfuscating' C compiler for encrypted computing. The context consists of (i) a processor that `works encrypted', taking in encrypted inputs and producing encrypted outputs while the data remains in encrypted form…

Covert channel attacks have been continuously studied as severe threats to modern computing systems. Software-based covert channels are a typically hard-to-detect branch of these attacks, since they leverage virtual resources to establish…

Practical attacks that exploit speculative execution can leak confidential information via microarchitectural side channels. The recently-demonstrated Spectre attacks leverage speculative loads which circumvent access checks to read…

The power grid is a critical infrastructure essential for public safety and welfare. As its reliance on digital technologies grows, so do its vulnerabilities to sophisticated cyber threats, which could severely disrupt operations. Effective…

Manipulations of return addresses on the stack are the basis for a variety of attacks on programs written in memory unsafe languages. Dual stack schemes for protecting return addresses promise an efficient and effective defense against such…

Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX) introduced new instructions to switch the processor to enclave mode which protects it from introspection. While the enclave mode strongly protects the memory and the state of the processor, it cannot…

The proliferation of ubiquitous computing requires energy-efficient as well as secure operation of modern processors. Side channel attacks are becoming a critical threat to security and privacy of devices embedded in modern computing…

Machine learning algorithms are typically run on large scale, distributed compute infrastructure that routinely face a number of unavailabilities such as failures and temporary slowdowns. Adding redundant computations using coding-theoretic…

Hardware-software leakage contracts have emerged as a formalism for specifying side-channel security guarantees of modern processors, yet verifying that a complex hardware design complies with its contract remains a major challenge. While…

Integrated circuits (ICs) are essential to modern electronic systems, yet they face significant risks from physical reverse engineering (RE) attacks that compromise intellectual property (IP) and overall system security. While IC camouflage…

Malware attacks are a significant part of the new software security threats detected each year. Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) are a set of hardware instructions introduced by Intel in their recent lines of processors that are…

This paper develops a fully distributed attack-resilient secondary defense strategies for AC microgrids, addressing more generally unbounded attacks on control input channels than those addressed in existing literature. The secondary…

Microprocessors enable aggressive hardware virtualization by means of which multiple processes temporally execute on the system. These security-critical and ordinary processes interact with each other to assure application progress.…

Intellectual property (IP) piracy has become a non-negligible problem as the integrated circuit (IC) production supply chain is becoming increasingly globalized and separated that enables attacks by potentially untrusted attackers. Logic…