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SPECS: A Lightweight Runtime Mechanism for Protecting Software from Security-Critical Processor Bugs

Authors:

Cynthia Sturton,

Samuel T. King,

Jonathan M. SmithAuthors Info & Claims

ASPLOS '15: Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems

Pages 517 - 529

https://doi.org/10.1145/2694344.2694366

Published: 14 March 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Processor implementation errata remain a problem, and worse, a subset of these bugs are security-critical. We classified 7 years of errata from recent commercial processors to understand the magnitude and severity of this problem, and found that of 301 errata analyzed, 28 are security-critical. We propose the SECURITY-CRITICAL PROCESSOR ER- RATA CATCHING SYSTEM (SPECS) as a low-overhead solution to this problem. SPECS employs a dynamic verification strategy that is made lightweight by limiting protection to only security-critical processor state. As a proof-of- concept, we implement a hardware prototype of SPECS in an open source processor. Using this prototype, we evaluate SPECS against a set of 14 bugs inspired by the types of security-critical errata we discovered in the classification phase. The evaluation shows that SPECS is 86% effective as a defense when deployed using only ISA-level state; incurs less than 5% area and power overhead; and has no software run-time overhead.

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Cited By

Iman MAhmadi-Pour SDrechsler RGhasempouri T(2024)Processor Vulnerability Detection with the Aid of Assertions: RISC-V Case Study2024 IEEE Nordic Circuits and Systems Conference (NorCAS)10.1109/NorCAS64408.2024.10752460(1-7)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/NorCAS64408.2024.10752460
Liu WTan BFung JChakrabarty K(2024)Theoretical Patchability Quantification for IP-Level Hardware Patching Designs2024 29th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC)10.1109/ASP-DAC58780.2024.10473895(951-956)Online publication date: 22-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ASP-DAC58780.2024.10473895
Zhang XChen ZYe JLi HWang JLiu CLi B(2023)Securing Network Information System Design: An Efficient Tool for DSP Undocumented Instruction MiningApplied Sciences10.3390/app1306393113:6(3931)Online publication date: 20-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app13063931
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Index Terms

SPECS: A Lightweight Runtime Mechanism for Protecting Software from Security-Critical Processor Bugs

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SPECS: A Lightweight Runtime Mechanism for Protecting Software from Security-Critical Processor Bugs
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Processor implementation errata remain a problem, and worse, a subset of these bugs are security-critical. We classified 7 years of errata from recent commercial processors to understand the magnitude and severity of this problem, and found that of 301 ...
Identifying Security Critical Properties for the Dynamic Verification of a Processor
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We present a methodology for identifying security critical properties for use in the dynamic verification of a processor. Such verification has been shown to be an effective way to prevent exploits of vulnerabilities in the processor, given a meaningful ...
SPECS: A Lightweight Runtime Mechanism for Protecting Software from Security-Critical Processor Bugs
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Processor implementation errata remain a problem, and worse, a subset of these bugs are security-critical. We classified 7 years of errata from recent commercial processors to understand the magnitude and severity of this problem, and found that of 301 ...

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ASPLOS '15: Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems

March 2015

720 pages

ISBN:9781450328357

DOI:10.1145/2694344

General Chairs:
Ozcan Ozturk
Bilkent University, Turkey
,
Kemal Ebcioglu
Global Supercomputing, USA
,
Program Chair:
Sandhya Dwarkadas
University of Rochester, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 50, Issue 4
ASPLOS '15
April 2015
676 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2775054
Editor:
Andy Gill
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Issue’s Table of Contents
ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 43, Issue 1
ASPLOS'15
March 2015
676 pages
ISSN:0163-5964
DOI:10.1145/2786763
Editor:
Doug DeGroot
acm dot org
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2015 Owner/Author.

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Published: 14 March 2015

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March 14 - 18, 2015

Istanbul, Turkey

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ASPLOS '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 48 of 287 submissions, 17%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 535 of 2,713 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Iman MAhmadi-Pour SDrechsler RGhasempouri T(2024)Processor Vulnerability Detection with the Aid of Assertions: RISC-V Case Study2024 IEEE Nordic Circuits and Systems Conference (NorCAS)10.1109/NorCAS64408.2024.10752460(1-7)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/NorCAS64408.2024.10752460
Liu WTan BFung JChakrabarty K(2024)Theoretical Patchability Quantification for IP-Level Hardware Patching Designs2024 29th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC)10.1109/ASP-DAC58780.2024.10473895(951-956)Online publication date: 22-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ASP-DAC58780.2024.10473895
Zhang XChen ZYe JLi HWang JLiu CLi B(2023)Securing Network Information System Design: An Efficient Tool for DSP Undocumented Instruction MiningApplied Sciences10.3390/app1306393113:6(3931)Online publication date: 20-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app13063931
Ryan KGregoire MSturton C(2023)SEIF: Augmented Symbolic Execution for Information Flow in Hardware DesignsProceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Hardware and Architectural Support for Security and Privacy10.1145/3623652.3623666(1-9)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623652.3623666
Chuah CAppold CLeinmueller TZhu Qvon Hanxleden RStephen EBrandt J(2023)Formal Verification of Security Properties on RISC-V ProcessorsProceedings of the 21st ACM-IEEE International Conference on Formal Methods and Models for System Design10.1145/3610579.3611085(159-168)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610579.3611085
Trippel TShin KBush KHicks M(2023)T-TER: Defeating A2 Trojans with Targeted Tamper-Evident RoutingProceedings of the 2023 ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3579856.3582837(746-759)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3579856.3582837
Meng XRaj KRay SBasu K(2023)SeVNoC: Security Validation of System-on-Chip Designs With NoC FabricsIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2022.317930742:2(672-682)Online publication date: Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2022.3179307
Liu WTan BFung JKarri RChakrabarty K(2023)Hardware-Supported Patching of Security Bugs in Hardware IP BlocksIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2022.316851342:1(54-67)Online publication date: Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2022.3168513
Ahmad BLiu WCollini LPearce HFung JValamehr JBidmeshki MSapiecha PBrown SChakrabarty KKarri RTan BMitra TYoung EXiong J(2022)Don't CWEAT ItProceedings of the 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design10.1145/3508352.3549369(1-9)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3508352.3549369
Meng XKundu SKanuparthi ABasu K(2022)RTL-ConTest: Concolic Testing on RTL for Detecting Security VulnerabilitiesIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2021.306656041:3(466-477)Online publication date: Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2021.3066560
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