Related papers: Timing the Transient Execution: A New Side-Channel…
The transient-execution attack Meltdown leaks sensitive information by transiently accessing inaccessible data during out-of-order execution. Although Meltdown is fixed in hardware for recent CPU generations, most currently-deployed CPUs…
We introduce a new timing side-channel attack on Intel CPU processors. Our Frontal attack exploits timing differences that arise from how the CPU frontend fetches and processes instructions while being interrupted. In particular, we observe…
Modern x86 processors have many prefetch instructions that can be used by programmers to boost performance. However, these instructions may also cause security problems. In particular, we found that on Intel processors, there are two…
Transient execution attacks, also called speculative execution attacks, have drawn much interest as they exploit the transient execution of instructions, e.g., during branch prediction, to leak data. Transient execution is fundamental to…
Research on transient execution attacks including Spectre and Meltdown showed that exception or branch misprediction events might leave secret-dependent traces in the CPU's microarchitectural state. This observation led to a proliferation…
Hardware (HW) security issues have been emerging at an alarming rate in recent years. Transient execution attacks, in particular, pose a genuine threat to the security of modern computing systems. Despite recent advances, understanding the…
Modern processors use branch prediction and speculative execution to maximize performance. For example, if the destination of a branch depends on a memory value that is in the process of being read, CPUs will try guess the destination and…
There is a long history of side channels in the memory hierarchy of modern CPUs. Especially the cache side channel is widely used in the context of transient execution attacks and covert channels. Therefore, many secure cache architectures…
Modern processors dynamically control their operating frequency to optimize resource utilization, maximize energy savings, and conform to system-defined constraints. If, during the execution of a software workload, the running average of…
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 years have brought microarchitectural security intothe spotlight, proving that modern CPUs are vulnerable toseveral classes of microarchitectural attacks. These attacksbypass the basic isolation primitives provided by the…
In the last two decades, the evolving cyber-threat landscape has brought to center stage the contentious tradeoffs between the security and performance of modern microprocessors. The guarantees provided by the hardware to ensure no…
Transient execution attacks that exploit speculation have raised significant concerns in computer systems. Typically, branch predictors are leveraged to trigger mis-speculation in transient execution attacks. In this work, we demonstrate a…
This paper evaluates new security threats due to the processor frontend in modern Intel processors. The root causes of the security threats are the multiple paths in the processor frontend that the micro-operations can take: through the…
For a distributed last-level cache (LLC) in a large multicore chip, the access time to one LLC bank can significantly differ from that to another due to the difference in physical distance. In this paper, we successfully demonstrated a new…
Side-channel attacks are a security exploit that take advantage of information leakage. They use measurement and analysis of physical parameters to reverse engineer and extract secrets from a system. Power analysis attacks in particular,…
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…
Time variation during program execution can leak sensitive information. Time variations due to program control flow and hardware resource contention have been used to steal encryption keys in cipher implementations such as AES and RSA. A…
Modern processor designs use a variety of microarchitectural methods to achieve high performance. Unfortunately, new side-channels have often been uncovered that exploit these enhanced designs. One area that has received little attention…
The timing characteristics of cache, a high-speed storage between the fast CPU and the slowmemory, may reveal sensitive information of a program, thus allowing an adversary to conduct side-channel attacks. Existing methods for detecting…