Implementation of Meltdown Attack Simulation for Cybersecurity Awareness Material

Abstract

One of the rising risk in cybersecurity is an attack on cyber physical system. Today’s computer systems has evolve through the development of processor technology, namely by the use of optimization techniques such as out-of-order execution. Using this technique, processors can improve computing system performance without sacrificing manufacture processes. However, the use of these optimization techniques has vulnerabilities, especially on Intel processors. The vulnerability is in the form of data exfiltration in the cache memory that can be exploit by an attack. Meltdown is an exploit attack that takes advantage of such vulnerabilities in modern Intel processors. This vulnerability can be used to extract data that is processed on that specific computer device using said processors, such as passwords, messages, or other credentials. In this paper, we use qualitative research which aims to describe a simulation approach with experience meltdown attack in a safe environment with applied a known meltdown attack scheme and source code to simulate the attack on an Intel Core i7 platform running Linux OS. Then we modified the source code to prove the concept that the Meltdown attack can extract data on devices using Intel processors without consent from the authorized user.