Timed Speculative Attacks exploiting Store-to-Load Forwarding bypassing Cache-based Countermeasures

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel class of speculative attacks, called Timed Speculative Attacks (TSA), that does not depend on the state changes in the cache memory. Instead, it makes use of the timing differences that occur due to store-to-load forwarding. We propose two attack strategies - Fill-and-Forward utilizing correctly speculated loads, and Fill-and-Misdirect using mis-speculated load instructions. While Fill-and-Forward exploits the shared store buffers in a multi-threaded CPU core, the Fill-and-Misdirect approach exploits the influence of rolled back mis-speculated loads on subsequent instructions. As case studies, we demonstrate a covert channel using Fill-and-Forward and key recovery attacks on OpenSSL AES and Romulus-N Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data scheme using Fill-and-Misdirect approach. Finally, we show that TSA is able to subvert popular cache-based countermeasures for transient attacks.