{"id":759472,"date":"2021-07-09T10:31:42","date_gmt":"2021-07-09T17:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&#038;p=759472"},"modified":"2021-07-09T10:59:16","modified_gmt":"2021-07-09T17:59:16","slug":"a-software-approach-to-defeating-side-channels-in-last-level-caches","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/a-software-approach-to-defeating-side-channels-in-last-level-caches\/","title":{"rendered":"A Software Approach to Defeating Side Channels in Last-Level Caches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We present a software approach to mitigate access-driven side-channel attacks that leverage last-level caches (LLCs) shared across cores to leak information between security domains (e.g., tenants in a cloud). Our approach dynamically manages physical memory pages shared between security domains to disable sharing of LLC lines, thus preventing &#8220;Flush-Reload&#8221; side channels via LLCs. It also manages cacheability of memory pages to thwart cross-tenant &#8220;Prime-Probe&#8221; attacks in LLCs. We have implemented our approach as a memory management subsystem called CacheBar within the Linux kernel to intervene on such side channels across container boundaries, as containers are a common method for enforcing tenant isolation in Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) clouds. Through formal verification, principled analysis, and empirical evaluation, we show that CacheBar achieves strong security with small performance overheads for PaaS workloads.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"CCS 2016 - A Software Approach to Defeating Side Channels in Last-Level Caches\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/_dAnVtrtfdA?feature=oembed&rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We present a software approach to mitigate access-driven side-channel attacks that leverage last-level caches (LLCs) shared across cores to leak information between security domains (e.g., tenants in a cloud). Our approach dynamically manages physical memory pages shared between security domains to disable sharing of LLC lines, thus preventing &#8220;Flush-Reload&#8221; side channels via LLCs. It also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"871","msr_page_range_end":"882","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"2016 Computer and Communications Security","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"2302098303","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":null,"msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2016-10-23","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13558],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[247555,248227,246691,248383,253144,257194,251977,248326],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-759472","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-security-privacy-cryptography","msr-locale-en_us","msr-field-of-study-cloud-computing","msr-field-of-study-computer-network","msr-field-of-study-computer-science","msr-field-of-study-computer-security","msr-field-of-study-formal-verification","msr-field-of-study-linux-kernel","msr-field-of-study-memory-management","msr-field-of-study-software"],"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2016-10-23","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"doi","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"10.1145\/2976749.2978324","label_id":"243106","label":0},{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1603.05615","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Ziqiao Zhou","user_id":40390,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Ziqiao Zhou"},{"type":"text","value":"Michael K. 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