Teapot: Efficiently Uncovering Spectre Gadgets in COTS Binaries

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Lin, Fangzheng, Wang, Zhongfa, Sasaki, Hiroshi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Lin, Fangzheng
Wang, Zhongfa
Sasaki, Hiroshi
author_facet Lin, Fangzheng
Wang, Zhongfa
Sasaki, Hiroshi
contents Speculative execution is crucial in enhancing modern processor performance but can introduce Spectre-type vulnerabilities that may leak sensitive information. Detecting Spectre gadgets from programs has been a research focus to enhance the analysis and understanding of Spectre attacks. However, one of the problems of existing approaches is that they rely on the presence of source code (or are impractical in terms of run-time performance and gadget detection ability). This paper presents Teapot, the first Spectre gadget scanner that works on COTS binaries with comparable performance to compiler-based alternatives. As its core principle, we introduce Speculation Shadows, a novel approach that separates the binary code for normal execution and speculation simulation in order to improve run-time efficiency. Teapot is based on static binary rewriting. It instruments the program to simulate the effects of speculative execution and also adds integrity checks to detect Spectre gadgets at run time. By leveraging fuzzing, Teapot succeeds in efficiently detecting Spectre gadgets. Evaluations show that Teapot outperforms both performance (more than 20x performant) and gadget detection ability than a previously proposed binary-based approach.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_11624
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Teapot: Efficiently Uncovering Spectre Gadgets in COTS Binaries
Lin, Fangzheng
Wang, Zhongfa
Sasaki, Hiroshi
Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
Speculative execution is crucial in enhancing modern processor performance but can introduce Spectre-type vulnerabilities that may leak sensitive information. Detecting Spectre gadgets from programs has been a research focus to enhance the analysis and understanding of Spectre attacks. However, one of the problems of existing approaches is that they rely on the presence of source code (or are impractical in terms of run-time performance and gadget detection ability). This paper presents Teapot, the first Spectre gadget scanner that works on COTS binaries with comparable performance to compiler-based alternatives. As its core principle, we introduce Speculation Shadows, a novel approach that separates the binary code for normal execution and speculation simulation in order to improve run-time efficiency. Teapot is based on static binary rewriting. It instruments the program to simulate the effects of speculative execution and also adds integrity checks to detect Spectre gadgets at run time. By leveraging fuzzing, Teapot succeeds in efficiently detecting Spectre gadgets. Evaluations show that Teapot outperforms both performance (more than 20x performant) and gadget detection ability than a previously proposed binary-based approach.
title Teapot: Efficiently Uncovering Spectre Gadgets in COTS Binaries
topic Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11624