Mitigating Spectre Attacks Using CFI Informed Speculation

Explore a comprehensive conference talk on SPECCFI, a novel approach to mitigating Spectre attacks using Control-Flow Integrity (CFI) informed speculation. Delve into the intricacies of this security technique designed to prevent speculative control-flow hijacking in modern CPUs. Learn about the implementation of CFI principles to constrain illegal control-flow during speculative execution, focusing on both forward and backward control-flow paths. Discover how SPECCFI combines with existing solutions to address all known non-vendor-specific Spectre vulnerabilities. Examine the talk's coverage of micro-architectural attacks, Spectre attack steps, related work, and ISA extensions. Gain insights into the main design, including CFG computation, SPECCFI under attack scenarios, and backward-edge defense mechanisms. Analyze the implementation details, security evaluation, and performance assessment of this innovative approach to enhancing CPU security against speculative execution vulnerabilities.