What is this

This is proof-of-concept code for my paper I See Dead micro-ops: Leaking Secrets via Intel/AMD Micro-Op Caches, published here at ISCA 2021 with Logan Moody, Mohammadkazem Taram and Matthew Jordan (click names to see LinkedIn).

We are advised by Ashish Venkat and Dean M. Tullsen in this publication.

Files in this

• variant-1: this is a modified Spectre-v1 attack that uses the micro-op cache instead of the LLC
• lfence-bypass: this is a proof-of-concept that the micro-op cache can make inserting LFENCE useless against spectre attacks
• environment1: this contains a script to collect environmental information and a record of the environment on which the POC code was run.

How to use this

Clone this repository into a linux server with build-essential installed. We used a Equinix s3.large.x86 server (Coffee Lake architecture) to test.

Each folder contains a ./run script and the lfence-bypass contains a README with extra instructions.