Related papers: Teapot: Efficiently Uncovering Spectre Gadgets in …
Attacks like Spectre abuse speculative execution, one of the key performance optimizations of modern CPUs. Recently, several testing tools have emerged to automatically detect speculative leaks in commercial (black-box) CPUs. However, the…
New speculation-based attacks that affect large numbers of modern systems are disclosed regularly. Currently, CPU vendors regularly fall back to heavy-handed mitigations like using barriers or enforcing strict programming guidelines…
Speculative execution techniques have been a cornerstone of modern processors to improve instruction-level parallelism. However, recent studies showed that this kind of techniques could be exploited by attackers to leak secret data via…
Spectre attacks exploit speculative execution to leak sensitive information. In the last few years, a number of static side-channel detectors have been proposed to detect cache leakage in the presence of speculative execution. However,…
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…
Microarchitectural attacks represent a challenging and persistent threat to modern processors, exploiting inherent design vulnerabilities in processors to leak sensitive information or compromise systems. Of particular concern is the…
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…
Spectre attacks exploit microprocessor speculative execution to read and transmit forbidden data outside the attacker's trust domain and sandbox. Recent hardware schemes allow potentially-unsafe speculative accesses but prevent the secret's…
Recently discovered Spectre and meltdown attacks affects almost all processors by leaking confidential information to other processes through side-channel attacks. These vulnerabilities expose design flaws in the architecture of modern…
SpecFuzz is the first tool that enables dynamic testing for speculative execution vulnerabilities (e.g., Spectre). The key is a novel concept of speculation exposure: The program is instrumented to simulate speculative execution in software…
Constant-time (CT) verification tools are commonly used for detecting potential side-channel vulnerabilities in cryptographic libraries. Recently, a new class of tools, called speculative constant-time (SCT) tools, has also been used for…
Speculative execution which is used pervasively in modern CPUs can leave side effects in the processor caches and other structures even when the speculated instructions do not commit and their direct effect is not visible. The recent…
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,…
CPU cache is a limited but crucial storage component in modern processors, whereas the cache timing side-channel may inadvertently leak information through the physically measurable timing variance. Speculative execution, an essential…
The Spectre vulnerability in modern processors has been widely reported. The key insight in this vulnerability is that speculative execution in processors can be misused to access the secrets. Subsequently, even though the speculatively…
Speculative execution is a hardware optimisation technique where a processor, while waiting on the completion of a computation required for an instruction, continues to execute later instructions based on a predicted value of the pending…
Since the discovery of Spectre, a large number of hardware mechanisms for secure speculation has been proposed. Intuitively, more defensive mechanisms are less efficient but can securely execute a larger class of programs, while more…
Spectre attacks disclosed in early 2018 expose data leakage scenarios via cache side channels. Specifically, speculatively executed paths due to branch mis-prediction may bring secret data into the cache which are then exposed via cache…
Speculative execution enhances processor performance by predicting intermediate results and executing instructions based on these predictions. However, incorrect predictions can lead to security vulnerabilities, as speculative instructions…
In recent years, several hardware-based countermeasures proposed to mitigate Spectre attacks have been shown to be insecure. To enable the development of effective secure speculation countermeasures, we need easy-to-use tools that can…