Presentation
Janus: Compiler-Based Defense Against Transient Execution Attacks Using ARM Hardware Primitives
DescriptionWe present Janus, a compiler-based security framework that mit-
igates transient execution attacks like Spectre and control-flow
hijacking on ARM64 platforms. Janus integrates speculative execu-
tion and control flow dependencies with PA modifiers, using PA and
BTI microarchitectural features to prevent control-flow speculation
attacks and secure both control flow and speculative execution
through existing control-flow integrity mechanisms. To optimize
performance, Janus minimizes overhead by merging defense opera-
tions across different defense layers (modifier fusion) and reusing
registers of protected variables (carrier reuse), while maintaining
strong security guarantees. Evaluation on SPEC CPU2017 shows
an average performance overhead of 3.85%, with real-world appli-
cations exhibiting overheads ranging from 2.97% to 7.80%. Janus
offers effective speculative execution security and low performance
and code size overhead, making it a robust solution for ARM-based
systems.
igates transient execution attacks like Spectre and control-flow
hijacking on ARM64 platforms. Janus integrates speculative execu-
tion and control flow dependencies with PA modifiers, using PA and
BTI microarchitectural features to prevent control-flow speculation
attacks and secure both control flow and speculative execution
through existing control-flow integrity mechanisms. To optimize
performance, Janus minimizes overhead by merging defense opera-
tions across different defense layers (modifier fusion) and reusing
registers of protected variables (carrier reuse), while maintaining
strong security guarantees. Evaluation on SPEC CPU2017 shows
an average performance overhead of 3.85%, with real-world appli-
cations exhibiting overheads ranging from 2.97% to 7.80%. Janus
offers effective speculative execution security and low performance
and code size overhead, making it a robust solution for ARM-based
systems.
Event Type
Research Manuscript
TimeTuesday, July 2812:16pm - 12:30pm PDT
LocationMtg Room 202AB