On the thermal attack in instruction caches

Joonho Kong; Johnsy K. John; Eui Young Chung; Sung Woo Chung; Jie Hu

doi:10.1109/TDSC.2009.16

On the thermal attack in instruction caches

Joonho Kong, Johnsy K. John, Eui Young Chung, Sung Woo Chung, Jie Hu

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The instruction cache has been recognized as one of the least hot units in microprocessors, which leaves the instruction cache largely ignored in on-chip thermal management. Consequently, thermal sensors are not allocated near the instruction cache. However, malicious codes can exploit the deficiency in this empirical design and heat up fine-grain localized hotspots in the instruction cache, which might lead to physical damages. In this paper, we show how instruction caches can be thermally attacked by malicious codes and how simple techniques can be utilized to protect instruction caches from the thermal attack.

Original language	English
Article number	5465864
Pages (from-to)	217-223
Number of pages	7
Journal	IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
Volume	7
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2009.16
Publication status	Published - 2010

Keywords

Cache memories
Fine-grain localized hotspot
Malicious codes
Microprocessors
Thermal attack

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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10.1109/TDSC.2009.16

Cite this

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title = "On the thermal attack in instruction caches",

abstract = "The instruction cache has been recognized as one of the least hot units in microprocessors, which leaves the instruction cache largely ignored in on-chip thermal management. Consequently, thermal sensors are not allocated near the instruction cache. However, malicious codes can exploit the deficiency in this empirical design and heat up fine-grain localized hotspots in the instruction cache, which might lead to physical damages. In this paper, we show how instruction caches can be thermally attacked by malicious codes and how simple techniques can be utilized to protect instruction caches from the thermal attack.",

keywords = "Cache memories, Fine-grain localized hotspot, Malicious codes, Microprocessors, Thermal attack",

author = "Joonho Kong and John, {Johnsy K.} and Chung, {Eui Young} and Chung, {Sung Woo} and Jie Hu",

note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (No. R01-2007-000-20750-0). This work was also supported by a Korea University Grant. The authors would like to thank Professor Kevin Skadron for his helpful comments. Finally, they would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. Sung Woo Chung is the corresponding author of this paper.",

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On the thermal attack in instruction caches

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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