Non-monopolizable caches

Abstract

We propose a flexibly-partitioned cache design that either drastically weakens or completely eliminates cache-based side channel attacks. The proposed Non-Monopolizable (NoMo) cache dynamically reserves cache lines for active threads and prevents other co-executing threads from evicting reserved lines. Unreserved lines remain available for dynamic sharing among threads. NoMo requires only simple modifications to the cache replacement logic, making it straightforward to adopt. It requires no software support enabling it to automatically protect pre-existing binaries. NoMo results in performance degradation of about 1% on average. We demonstrate that NoMo can provide strong security guarantees for the AES and Blowfish encryption algorithms.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2012
Source ID
10.1145/2086696.2086714

Entities

People

  • Aamer Jaleel
  • Jason Loew
  • Leonid Domnitser
  • Nael Abu-ghazaleh
  • Д. С. Пономарев

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory
  • Binghamton University
  • Division of Computer and Network Systems
  • Intel Corporation

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Networking
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Theoretical Analysis.