Mapping the Intel Last-Level Cache

Yuval Yarom; Qian Ge; Fangfei Liu; Ruby B.  Lee; Gernot Heiser

Paper 2015/905

Mapping the Intel Last-Level Cache

Yuval Yarom, Qian Ge, Fangfei Liu, Ruby B. Lee, and Gernot Heiser

Abstract

Modern Intel processors use an undisclosed hash function to map memory lines into last-level cache slices. In this work we develop a technique for reverse-engineering the hash function. We apply the technique to a 6-core Intel processor and demonstrate that knowledge of this hash function can facilitate cache-based side channel attacks, reducing the amount of work required for profiling the cache by three orders of magnitude. We also show how using the hash function we can double the number of colours used for page-colouring techniques.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Implementation
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: Side Channel Attack Cache
Contact author(s): yval @ cs adelaide edu au
History: 2015-09-17: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2015/905
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2015/905,
      author = {Yuval Yarom and Qian Ge and Fangfei Liu and Ruby B.  Lee and Gernot Heiser},
      title = {Mapping the Intel Last-Level Cache},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2015/905},
      year = {2015},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/905}
}