Speculator: A Tool to Analyze Speculative Execution Attacks and Mitigations
Lead PI
Co PI
Abstract
Speculator is a tool for studying speculative execution through performance counters. It allows to easily create proof-of-concepts implementations of speculative execution attacks and tests to verify their mitigations. Furthermore, speculator allows very precise measures (u-ops level) of events which gives the ability to reverse engineer speculative execution behavior. Using performance counters makers, it is possible to deterministically observe speculative execution without rely on very noisy and convoluted side-channels.
For more information, visit the project Github homepage and its wiki.
Funding
Related Publications
- A. Mambretti, M. Neugschwandtner, A. Sorniotti, E. Kirda, W. Robertson, A. Kurmus. Speculator: A Tool to Analyze Speculative Execution Attacks and Mitigations. 35th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), San Juan, Puerto Rico, December 2019. DOI: 10.1145/3359789.3359837
- A. Mambretti, A. Sandulescu, A. Sorniotti, W. Robertson, E. Kirda, A. Kurmus. Bypassing memory safety mechanisms through speculative control flow hijacking. 6th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroSP), Vienna, Austria, September 2021. DOI: 10.1109/EuroSP51992.2021.00048