Title:

Downfall: Exploiting Speculative Data Gathering

 

Abstract:

We introduce Downfall attacks, new transient execution attacks that undermine the security of computers running everywhere across the internet. We exploit the gather instruction on high-performance x86 CPUs to leak data across boundaries of user-kernel, processes, virtual machines, and trusted execution environments. We also develop practical and end-to-end attacks to steal cryptographic keys, program’s runtime data, and even data at rest (arbitrary data). Our findings, exploitation techniques, and demonstrated attacks defeat all previous defenses, calling for critical hardware fixes and security updates for widely-used client and server computers.

 

Bio:

I am a Senior Research Scientist at Google. Before that, I was a postdoctoral scholar at UCSD. I have a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an MSc in Computer Science from WPI. I work on computer and hardware security, spanning various topics such as microarchitectural vulnerabilities, side-channel cryptanalysis, and security architecture. My research has improved the security of superscalar CPUs, memory subsystems, and cryptographic implementations, which billions of users use daily.

 

Speaker:

Daniel Moghimi, PhD

Research Scientist
Google