Automatic Detection of Speculative Execution Combinations
Xaver Fabian, Marco Guarnieri, Marco Patrignani
2022Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security21 citationsDOIOpen Access PDF
Abstract
Modern processors employ different speculation mechanisms to speculate over different kinds of instructions. Attackers can exploit these mechanisms simultaneously in order to trigger leaks of speculatively-accessed data. Thus, sound reasoning about such speculative leaks requires accounting for all potential speculation mechanisms. Unfortunately, existing formal models only support reasoning about fixed, hard-coded speculation mechanisms, with no simple support to extend said reasoning to new mechanisms.
Topics & Concepts
SpeculationExploitComputer scienceSpeculative multithreadingSpeculative executionSimple (philosophy)Order (exchange)Out-of-order executionProgramming languageMultithreadingComputer securityParallel computingFinancePhilosophyThread (computing)EpistemologyEconomicsSecurity and Verification in ComputingAdvanced Malware Detection TechniquesDistributed systems and fault tolerance