fence.t.s: Closing Timing Channels in High-Performance Out-of-Order Cores through ISA-Supported Temporal Partitioning

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Wistoff, Nils, Heiser, Gernot, Benini, Luca
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Wistoff, Nils
Heiser, Gernot
Benini, Luca
author_facet Wistoff, Nils
Heiser, Gernot
Benini, Luca
contents Microarchitectural timing channels exploit information leakage between security domains that should be isolated, bypassing the operating system's security boundaries. These channels result from contention for shared microarchitectural state. In the RISC-V instruction set, the temporal fence instruction (fence.t) was proposed to close timing channels by providing an operating system with the means to temporally partition microarchitectural state inexpensively in simple in-order cores. This work explores challenges with fence.t in superscalar out-of-order cores featuring large and pervasive microarchitectural state. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel SW-supported temporal fence (fence.t.s), which reuses existing mechanisms and supports advanced microarchitectural features, enabling full timing channel protection of an exemplary out-of-order core (OpenC910) at negligible hardware costs and a minimal performance impact of 1.0 %.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_07576
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle fence.t.s: Closing Timing Channels in High-Performance Out-of-Order Cores through ISA-Supported Temporal Partitioning
Wistoff, Nils
Heiser, Gernot
Benini, Luca
Cryptography and Security
Microarchitectural timing channels exploit information leakage between security domains that should be isolated, bypassing the operating system's security boundaries. These channels result from contention for shared microarchitectural state. In the RISC-V instruction set, the temporal fence instruction (fence.t) was proposed to close timing channels by providing an operating system with the means to temporally partition microarchitectural state inexpensively in simple in-order cores. This work explores challenges with fence.t in superscalar out-of-order cores featuring large and pervasive microarchitectural state. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel SW-supported temporal fence (fence.t.s), which reuses existing mechanisms and supports advanced microarchitectural features, enabling full timing channel protection of an exemplary out-of-order core (OpenC910) at negligible hardware costs and a minimal performance impact of 1.0 %.
title fence.t.s: Closing Timing Channels in High-Performance Out-of-Order Cores through ISA-Supported Temporal Partitioning
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.07576