Speculative Interference: A Modern Spectre Attack

Abstract: Since the Spectre family of attacks were made public knowledge in January of 2018, researchers, manufacturers and interested individuals have experimented a lot with creating defences against it. But there have also been a lot of research aimed at circumventing these defences and finding alternative side-channels and mechanisms for performing Spectre-type attacks. This thesis implements and demonstrates a proof of concept of one of these newfound attacks known as a Speculative interference attack. This is done in a simulated environment, which to our knowledge has not been done before at the time of writing this report. After the 'basic' version of a Spectre attack has been explained, the thesis will explain how the more advanced interference attack works and how it is implemented in the simulated environment. In the end the results gained with the attack will be presented, which should convince the reader of the relevance and possibilities of the attack.