Researchers have found two novel types of attacks that target the conditional branch predictor found in high-end Intel processors, which could be exploited to compromise billions of processors currently in use.
The multi-university and industry research team led by computer scientists at University of California San Diego will present their work at the 2024 ACM ASPLOS Conference that begins tomorrow. The paper,"Pathfinder: High-Resolution Control-Flow Attacks Exploiting the Conditional Branch Predictor," is based on findings from scientists from UC San Diego, Purdue University, Georgia Tech, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Google.
In software, frequent branching occurs as programs navigate different paths based on varying data values. The direction of these branches, whether"taken" or"not taken," provides crucial insights into the executed program data. Given the significant impact of branches on modern processor performance, a crucial optimization known as the"branch predictor" is employed.
The researchers also introduce an exceptionally precise Spectre-style poisoning attack, enabling attackers to induce intricate patterns of branch mispredictions within victim code."This manipulation leads the victim to execute unintended code paths, inadvertently exposing its confidential data," said UC San Diego computer science Professor Dean Tullsen.
"Pathfinder can reveal the outcome of almost any branch in almost any victim program, making it the most precise and powerful microarchitectural control-flow extraction attack that we have seen so far," said Kazem Taram, an assistant professor of computer science at Purdue University and a UC San Diego computer science PhD graduate.
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