Micro-Architectural Attacks and Defenses

ABSTRACT

Micro-architectural attacks are serious threats for security and safety of modern computing platforms. In this talk, I will introduce micro-architectural attacks and defense mechanisms we have developed in recent years. First, I will introduces a new speculative execution attack called SpectreRewind, which shows, for the first time, a way to leak secrets to past instructions in an out-of-order processor by targeting a non-pipelined unit of the processor. Second, I will introduce a memory-aware cache denial-of-service (DoS) attack, which is a more effective way to delay victim tasks on cross-core victim tasks on a shared memory multicore processor. Lastly, I will introduce a small micro-architectural extension for RISC-V multicores that can be used to defend against DoS attacks.

BIO

Heechul Yun is an associate professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Kansas. His research interests include OS, computer architecture, and real-time embedded systems with special emphasis on addressing real-time, security, and safety related issues on safety-critical cyber-physical systems (e.g., autonomous cars and UAVs). His work has appeared in top embedded real-time systems venues such as RTAS, ECRTS and Transactions on Computers; and received multiple awards and recognition (Best Paper Award from RTSS'20, Outstanding Paper Award from RTAS'19, Best Paper Award from RTAS'16, Editor's Pick of the Year Award from IEEE Transactions on Computers in 2016). He received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013. Prior to his Ph.D., he worked at Samsung Electronics as a senior software engineer.