Abstract
The Spectre attacks exploit the speculative execution vulnerabilities to exfiltrate private information by building a leakage channel. Creation of a leakage channel is the basic element for spectre attacks, among which the cache-tag side channel is considered to be the most serious one. To block the leakage channels, a novel cache applies Dynamic Mapping technology, named DmCache, is presented in this paper. DmCache applies a dynamic mapping mechanism to temporarily store all the cache lines polluted by speculative execution and keep invisible when accessing. Then it monitors the head of the reorder buffer to determine which polluted cache line can become visible. In this paper, we demonstrated that Spectre attacks exerted no impact on a processor system equipped with DmCache based on the analysis of the processor’s circuit behaviour, which equipped with the DmCache and under the Spectre attack.
Highlights
The design strategy of the speculative execution is widely applied in modern processors
Based on the work above, the security of DmCache was tested under spectre attacks with two cache tag state-based channel building technology
For Spectre attacks using Flush+Reload, the Valid BitTable (VBT) cannot be updated if uncertainty exists as to whether the instructions can be updated
Summary
The design strategy of the speculative execution is widely applied in modern processors. This is an important way to improve the performance of processors. The path of the processor is going to execute along can be predicted, which enable the processor to speculatively execute subsequent instructions without any security checks. If the prediction is correct, the result of speculative execution can be committed. Compared to stalling the pipeline and waiting for the branch instructions to be counted out, speculative execution can improve the efficiency of execution
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