Wrangling with the Ghost - An Inside Story of Mitigating Speculative Execution Side Channel Vulnerabilities
Explore Microsoft's approach to researching and mitigating speculative execution side channel vulnerabilities in this Black Hat conference presentation. Delve into the company's collaborative efforts, including bringing in experts from across Microsoft and hiring an industry specialist to accelerate understanding of these issues. Learn about the taxonomy created to design robust mitigations, covering topics such as speculation primitives, windowing gadgets, and disclosure primitives. Examine the four components of speculation techniques and their relevance to software security models. Discover the mitigation tactics developed, including speculation barriers, CPU core isolation, and split user and kernel page tables. Gain insights into new variants and mitigations, and access valuable resources on Microsoft's Speculative Execution Side Channel Bounty program.