SemPat: Using Hyperproperty-based Semantic Analysis to Generate Microarchitectural Attack Patterns

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Godbole, Adwait, Manerkar, Yatin A., Seshia, Sanjit A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Godbole, Adwait
Manerkar, Yatin A.
Seshia, Sanjit A.
author_facet Godbole, Adwait
Manerkar, Yatin A.
Seshia, Sanjit A.
contents Microarchitectural security verification of software has seen the emergence of two broad classes of approaches. The first is based on semantic security properties (e.g., non-interference) which are verified for a given program and a specified abstract model of the hardware microarchitecture. The second is based on attack patterns, which, if found in a program execution, indicates the presence of an exploit. While the former uses a formal specification that can capture several gadget variants targeting the same vulnerability, it is limited by the scalability of verification. Patterns, while more scalable, must be currently constructed manually, as they are narrower in scope and sensitive to gadget-specific structure. This work develops a technique that, given a non-interference-based semantic security hyperproperty, automatically generates attack patterns up to a certain complexity parameter (called the skeleton size). Thus, we combine the advantages of both approaches: security can be specified by a hyperproperty that uniformly captures several gadget variants, while automatically generated patterns can be used for scalable verification. We implement our approach in a tool and demonstrate the ability to generate new patterns, (e.g., for SpectreV1, SpectreV4) and improved scalability using the generated patterns over hyperproperty-based verification.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_05403
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SemPat: Using Hyperproperty-based Semantic Analysis to Generate Microarchitectural Attack Patterns
Godbole, Adwait
Manerkar, Yatin A.
Seshia, Sanjit A.
Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
Microarchitectural security verification of software has seen the emergence of two broad classes of approaches. The first is based on semantic security properties (e.g., non-interference) which are verified for a given program and a specified abstract model of the hardware microarchitecture. The second is based on attack patterns, which, if found in a program execution, indicates the presence of an exploit. While the former uses a formal specification that can capture several gadget variants targeting the same vulnerability, it is limited by the scalability of verification. Patterns, while more scalable, must be currently constructed manually, as they are narrower in scope and sensitive to gadget-specific structure. This work develops a technique that, given a non-interference-based semantic security hyperproperty, automatically generates attack patterns up to a certain complexity parameter (called the skeleton size). Thus, we combine the advantages of both approaches: security can be specified by a hyperproperty that uniformly captures several gadget variants, while automatically generated patterns can be used for scalable verification. We implement our approach in a tool and demonstrate the ability to generate new patterns, (e.g., for SpectreV1, SpectreV4) and improved scalability using the generated patterns over hyperproperty-based verification.
title SemPat: Using Hyperproperty-based Semantic Analysis to Generate Microarchitectural Attack Patterns
topic Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.05403