SafeBet: Secure, Simple, and Fast Speculative Execution Article Swipe

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Conor James Green , Cole Nelson , Mithuna Thottethodi , T. N. Vijaykumar ·

YOU? · · 2023 · Open Access · · DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2306.07785

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 transmission by delaying most access-dependent instructions even in the predominantly-common, no-attack case, which incurs performance loss and hardware complexity. Instead, we propose SafeBet which allows only, and does not delay most, safe accesses, achieving both security and high performance. SafeBet is based on the key observation that speculatively accessing a destination location is safe if the location's access by the same static trust domain has been committed previously; and potentially unsafe, otherwise. We extend this observation to handle inter trust-domain code and data interactions. SafeBet employs the Speculative Memory Access Control Table (SMACT) to track non-speculative trust domain code region-destination pairs. Disallowed accesses wait until reaching commit to trigger well-known replay, with virtually no change to the pipeline. Software simulations using SpecCPU benchmarks show that SafeBet uses an 8.3-KB SMACT per core to perform within 6% on average (63% at worst) of the unsafe baseline behind which NDA-restrictive, a previous scheme of security and hardware complexity comparable to SafeBet's, lags by 83% on average.

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Mathematical Analysis

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Computer science Commit Exploit Domain (mathematical analysis) Pipeline (software) Computer security Speculative execution Code (set theory) Key (lock) Replay attack Operating system Parallel computing Computer network Hash function Programming language Database Mathematics Set (abstract data type) Mathematical analysis

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Type: preprint
Language: en
Landing Page: http://arxiv.org/abs/2306.07785
PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.07785
OA Status: green
Cited By: 1
Related Works: 10
OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4380715254

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OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4380715254

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2306.07785

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Title: SafeBet: Secure, Simple, and Fast Speculative Execution

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Type: preprint

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Language: en

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Publication year: 2023

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Publication date: 2023-06-13

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Authors: Conor James Green, Cole Nelson, Mithuna Thottethodi, T. N. Vijaykumar

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Landing page: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.07785

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PDF URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.07785

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Concepts: Computer science, Commit, Exploit, Domain (mathematical analysis), Pipeline (software), Computer security, Speculative execution, Code (set theory), Key (lock), Replay attack, Operating system, Parallel computing, Computer network, Hash function, Programming language, Database, Mathematics, Set (abstract data type), Mathematical analysis

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Cited by: 1

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abstract_inverted_index.previously;	97
abstract_inverted_index.simulations	149
abstract_inverted_index.speculative	4, 24
abstract_inverted_index.instructions	35
abstract_inverted_index.performance.	68
abstract_inverted_index.transmission	30
abstract_inverted_index.trust-domain	109
abstract_inverted_index.interactions.	113
abstract_inverted_index.speculatively	77
abstract_inverted_index.microprocessor	3
abstract_inverted_index.non-speculative	125
abstract_inverted_index.NDA-restrictive,	177
abstract_inverted_index.access-dependent	34
abstract_inverted_index.potentially-unsafe	23
abstract_inverted_index.region-destination	129
abstract_inverted_index.predominantly-common,	39
cited_by_percentile_year
countries_distinct_count	0
institutions_distinct_count	4
sustainable_development_goals[0].id	https://metadata.un.org/sdg/16
sustainable_development_goals[0].score	0.7400000095367432
sustainable_development_goals[0].display_name	Peace, Justice and strong institutions
citation_normalized_percentile