公开(公告)号：US20170083456A1

公开(公告)日：2017-03-23

申请号：US15086128

申请日：2016-03-31

Applicant: QUALCOMM INCORPORATED

Inventor： THOMAS ZENG ,  AZZEDINE TOUZNI ,  TZUNG REN TZENG ,  PHIL J. BOSTLEY

IPC: G06F12/14 ,  G06F9/455 ,  G06F12/1027

CPC classification number: G06F12/145 ,  G06F9/45504 ,  G06F12/1027 ,  G06F12/1491 ,  G06F21/79 ,  G06F2212/1032 ,  G06F2212/151 ,  G06F2212/152 ,  G06F2212/654 ,  G06F2212/68

Abstract: A security apparatus and method are provided for performing a security algorithm that prevents unauthorized access to contents of a physical address (PA) that have been loaded into a storage element of the computer system as a result of performing a prediction algorithm during a hardware table walk that uses a predictor to predict a PA based on a virtual address (VA). When the predictor is enabled, it might be possible for a person with knowledge of the system to configure the predictor to cause contents stored at a PA of a secure portion of the main memory to be loaded into a register in the TLB. In this way, a person who should not have access to contents stored in secure portions of the main memory could indirectly gain unauthorized access to those contents. The apparatus and method prevent such unauthorized access to the contents by masking the contents under certain conditions.