Port Contention for Fun and Profit

Explore the intricacies of Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) architectures as potential targets for side-channel attacks in this 22-minute IEEE conference talk. Delve into the concept of port contention as a high-resolution timing side-channel leakage source, which doesn't rely on the memory subsystem. Learn about an end-to-end attack implementation on Intel Skylake and Kaby Lake architectures with Hyper-Threading, demonstrating the recovery of a P-384 private key from an OpenSSL-powered TLS server. Discover how this attack method can be applied to shared libraries, static builds, and SGX enclaves, highlighting its wide-ranging implications. Gain insights into modern microarchitecture, execution engines, spatial resolution, and potential mitigations for this security vulnerability.