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A Study of Mitigation Methods for Speculative Cache Side Channel Attacks

Side channels give attackers the opportunity to reveal private information without accessing it directly. In this study, several novel approaches are presented to mitigate cache side channel attacks including Spectre attack and its variants, resulting in several contributions. CHASM shows the information leakage in several new cache mapping schemes, where different cache address mappings may provide higher or lower protection against cache side channel attacks. GuardCache creates a noisy cache side-channel, making it more difficult for the attacker to determine if an access is a hit or miss (which is the basis for most side channel attacks). SecurityCloak is a framework that encompasses GuardCache with SafeLoadOnMiss whereby cache load misses during speculative execution are delayed until the speculation is resolved, thus preventing attacks that rely on accessing data in during (mis) speculated executions. To search for a compromise between security and performance, it is recommended not always to use protections such as SecurityCloak protections, but also to activate the protection only while executing critical sections of code or on-demand when an attack is detected (or suspected). Our experimental results show a high degree of obfuscation (and prevention of side channels) with a minimal impact on the performance.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc2332527
Date05 1900
CreatorsMosquera Ferrandiz, Fernando
ContributorsKavi, Krishna M., Tunc, Cihan, Mehta, Gayatri, Pottathuparambil, Robin, Gulur, Nagendra
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, Mosquera Ferrandiz, Fernando, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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