SCALE: Secure and Scalable Cache Partitioning
Paper in proceeding, 2023

Dynamically partitioned last-level caches enhance performance while also introducing security vulnerabilities. We show how cache allocation policies can act as a side-channel and be exploited to launch attacks and obtain sensitive information. Our analysis reveals that information leaks due to predictable changes in cache allocation for the victim, that is caused and/or observed by the adversary, leads to exploits We propose SCALE, a secure cache allocation policy and enforcement mechanism, to protect the cache against timing-based side-channel attacks. SCALE uses randomness, in a novel way, to enable dynamic and scalable partitioning while protecting against cache allocation policy side-channel attacks Non-determinism is introduced into the allocation policy decisions by adding noise, which prevents the adversary from observing predictable changes in allocation and thereby infer secrets. We leverage differential privacy (DP), and show that SCALE can provide quantifiable and information theoretic security guarantees. SCALE outperforms state-of-the-art secure cache solutions, on a 16-core tiled chip multi-processor (CMP) with multi-programmed workloads, and improves performance up to 39%and by 14%, on average.

Author

Nadja Holtryd

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)

Madhavan Manivannan

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)

Per Stenström

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer and Network Systems

Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2023

68-79
9798350300628 (ISBN)

2023 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2023
San Jose, USA,

Subject Categories

Computer Engineering

Computer Science

Computer Systems

DOI

10.1109/HOST55118.2023.10133713

More information

Latest update

6/29/2023