oo7: Low-overhead Defense against Spectre Attacks via Program Analysis (1807.05843v6)

Abstract: The Spectre vulnerability in modern processors has been widely reported. The key insight in this vulnerability is that speculative execution in processors can be misused to access the secrets. Subsequently, even though the speculatively executed instructions are squashed, the secret may linger in micro-architectural states such as cache, and can potentially be accessed by an attacker via side channels. In this paper, we propose oo7, a static analysis approach that can mitigate Spectre attacks by detecting potentially vulnerable code snippets in program binaries and protecting them against the attack by patching them. Our key contribution is to balance the concerns of effectiveness, analysis time and run-time overheads. We employ control flow extraction, taint analysis, and address analysis to detect tainted conditional branches and speculative memory accesses. oo7 can detect all fifteen purpose-built Spectre-vulnerable code patterns, whereas Microsoft compiler with Spectre mitigation option can only detect two of them. We also report the results of a large-scale study on applying oo7 to over 500 program binaries (average binary size 261 KB) from different real-world projects. We protect programs against Spectre attack by selectively inserting fences only at vulnerable conditional branches to prevent speculative execution. Our approach is experimentally observed to incur around 5.9% performance overheads on SPECint benchmarks.

• IEEEtran.cls is a LaTeX class file serving as a foundational guide and starter file for formatting papers to meet IEEE conference publishing standards.
• Utilizing this guide helps researchers correctly format their manuscripts, mitigating structural errors and allowing focus on content rather than complex formatting issues.
• The template ensures consistent formatting for IEEE conference papers, facilitating effective scholarly communication in technical domains.

IEEEtran.cls for IEEE Conferences: A Practical Guide

The paper entitled "Bare Demo of IEEEtran.cls for IEEE Conferences" primarily serves as a foundational guide for using the IEEEtran.cls file in the preparation of IEEE conference papers within the LaTeX environment. Authored by Michael Shell and contributors, the document does not introduce novel research findings but rather provides essential technical resources to assist authors in aligning their papers with IEEE's formatting requirements.

The introduction section accurately identifies the purpose of the document: to act as a starter file that facilitates compliance with IEEE formatting standards. Such guidance is crucial for researchers within electrical engineering and computer science disciplines, ensuring that their publications meet established professional standards, thereby enhancing the clarity and efficacy of scholarly communication.

The document is structured to guide users through various sections of a typical conference paper. It includes sections like the introduction, subsections, subsubsections, and acknowledgments, all of which are quintessential components when drafting a conference manuscript. The conclusion section within the demo file succinctly encapsulates the goal of providing a template to streamline the paper-writing process.

The practical implications of this document are significant for researchers aiming to publish their findings at IEEE-sponsored conferences. It mitigates the challenges associated with typographical and structural errors, often encountered during manuscript preparation, by offering a standard template. Utilizing such standardized formats, researchers can focus more on the content of their work rather than the intricacies of document formatting.

Given the widespread adoption of IEEEtran.cls in academic environments, future development and maintenance of this class file are essential to accommodate evolving standards or additional formatting needs that may arise due to changes in publication policies or technological advancements. It reinforces the importance of having robust, user-friendly tools to support research dissemination in technical domains, allowing for consistent presentation across diverse research topics. Such standardization might invite further innovations in automated formatting tools or enhancements to existing LaTeX features.

While the document does not report empirical findings or theoretical advancements, its clarity and utility in providing a standardized framework can indirectly contribute to the progression of scientific fields by facilitating seamless and effective communication among researchers.