State Injection Into Hardware Prefetchers
Bulletin ID: AMD-SB-7023
Potential Impact: Data leakage via Side Channels
Severity: N/A
Summary
A research paper titled ‘ShadowLoad: Injecting State into Hardware Prefetchers’ was provided to AMD in February 2024.
The paper discusses the possibility for prefetchers to be used to inject cache loads using a technique referred to as ”ShadowLoad”. The technique can potentially expand the attack surface of existing attacks.
Using a framework referred to as ”StrideRE” the researchers automatically reverse engineer parameters required for hardware stride-prefetch attacks. The paper describes how this stride prefetcher can be used to leak offsets for stride patterns across contexts, possibly creating a covert channel.
AMD has evaluated the paper and has determined that the researchers did not identify any AMD prefetchers that have not already been publicly disclosed in the referenced Software Optimization Guide and did not identify any new security implications with AMD prefetchers.
Affected Products
“Zen”, “Zen+”, “Zen 2”, “Zen 3” and “Zen 4” CPUs
Mitigation
No new mitigations are required.
Acknowledgement
AMD thanks researchers from CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security for reporting this issue and engaging in coordinated vulnerability disclosure.
Revisions
Revision Date |
Description |
2024-10-18 |
Initial publication |
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