Intel Corporation
Mitigation of cache-latency based side-channel attacks

Abstract:

Particular embodiments described herein provide for an electronic device that can be configured to receive a request for data, wherein the request is received on a system that regularly stores data in a cache and provide the requested data without causing the data or an address of the data to be cached or for changes to the cache to occur. In an example, the requested data is already in a level 1 cache, level 2 cache, or last level cache and the cache does not change its state. Also, a snoop request can be broadcasted to acquire the requested data and the snoop request is a read request and not a request for ownership of the data. In addition, changes to a translation lookaside buffer when the data was obtained using a linear to physical address translation is prevented.