Non-monopolizable caches
Open Access
- 26 January 2012
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization
- Vol. 8 (4), 1-21
- https://doi.org/10.1145/2086696.2086714
Abstract
We propose a flexibly-partitioned cache design that either drastically weakens or completely eliminates cache-based side channel attacks. The proposed Non-Monopolizable (NoMo) cache dynamically reserves cache lines for active threads and prevents other co-executing threads from evicting reserved lines. Unreserved lines remain available for dynamic sharing among threads. NoMo requires only simple modifications to the cache replacement logic, making it straightforward to adopt. It requires no software support enabling it to automatically protect pre-existing binaries. NoMo results in performance degradation of about 1% on average. We demonstrate that NoMo can provide strong security guarantees for the AES and Blowfish encryption algorithms.Keywords
Funding Information
- Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS-1018496CNS-0958501)
- Air Force Research Laboratory (FA8750-09-1-0137)
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