Efficient mitigation of side-channel based attacks against speculative execution processing architectures
US11544070B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jul 28, 2021 |
| Grant date | Jan 3, 2023 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jul 28, 2041 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F2221/034
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
The present disclosure is directed to systems and methods for mitigating or eliminating the effectiveness of a side-channel based attack, such as one or more classes of an attack commonly known as Spectre. Novel instruction prefixes, and in certain embodiments one or more corresponding instruction prefix parameters, may be provided to enforce a serialized order of execution for particular instructions without serializing an entire instruction flow, thereby improving performance and mitigation reliability over existing solutions. In addition, improved mitigation of such attacks is provided by randomizing both the execution branch history as well as the source address of each vulnerable indirect branch, thereby eliminating the conditions required for such attacks.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.