New attacks and defense for encrypted-address cache

Abstract

Conflict-based cache attacks can allow an adversary to infer the access pattern of a co-running application by orchestrating evictions via cache conflicts. Such attacks can be mitigated by randomizing the location of the lines in the cache. Our recent proposal, CEASER, makes cache randomization practical by accessing the cache using an encrypted address and periodically changing the encryption key. CEASER was analyzed with the state-of-the-art algorithm on forming eviction sets, and the analysis showed that CEASER with a Remap-Rate of 1% is sufficient to tolerate years of attack.