Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Side channel attack prevention by maintaining architectural state consistency
-
Application No.: US16222785Application Date: 2018-12-17
-
Publication No.: US11216556B2Publication Date: 2022-01-04
- Inventor: Ken Grewal , Ravi Sahita , David Durham , Erdem Aktas , Sergej Deutsch , Abhishek Basak
- Applicant: Intel Corporation
- Applicant Address: US CA Santa Clara
- Assignee: Intel Corporation
- Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
- Current Assignee Address: US CA Santa Clara
- Agency: Alliance IP, LLC
- Main IPC: G08B23/00
- IPC: G08B23/00 ; G06F12/16 ; G06F12/14 ; G06F11/00 ; G06F21/55 ; G06F9/38 ; G06F12/0891

Abstract:
The present disclosure is directed to systems and methods that maintain consistency between a system architectural state and a microarchitectural state in the system cache circuitry to prevent a side-channel attack from accessing secret information. Speculative execution of one or more instructions by the processor circuitry causes memory management circuitry to transition the cache circuitry from a first microarchitectural state to a second microarchitectural state. The memory management circuitry maintains the cache circuitry in the second microarchitectural state in response to a successful completion and/or retirement of the speculatively executed instruction. The memory management circuitry reverts the cache circuitry from the second microarchitectural state to the first microarchitectural state in response to an unsuccessful completion, flushing, and/or retirement of the speculatively executed instruction.
Public/Granted literature
- US20190138720A1 SIDE CHANNEL ATTACK PREVENTION BY MAINTAINING ARCHITECTURAL STATE CONSISTENCY Public/Granted day:2019-05-09
Information query