Pathfinder : High-Resolution Control-Flow Attacks Exploiting The Conditional Branch Predictor

Researchers delve into the vulnerabilities inherent in Intel’s branch prediction algorithms.

Highlighting novel control-flow attacks, the study showcases techniques that leverage the Conditional Branch Predictor to manipulate and observe path history in modern CPUs.

This pivotal research, conducted by experts from the University of California San Diego, opens new avenues for understanding and securing microarchitectural operations against potential exploits.

System Requirements

Intel 12/13/14th Gen Intel CPUs (P-core)

Note: All the attacks can be extended to previous generations of Intel CPUs, but the code must be adjusted according to the Conditional Branch Predictor (CBP) structure. To know more about this, please refer to our previous.

Step 1: Clone!

To clone the repository and its submodules, use the git clone –recursive command:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/hoseinyavarzadeh/pathfinder_source.git

Step 2: Necessary Installations

In order to install required packages and drivers for performance counters run the following commands in the terminal after cloning the github repo. Without Installing the required packages/drivers it will not work.

chmod a+x *.sh
./install.sh

Step 3: Let’s Run the PHR Attack!

./run.sh

A reasonable result should look like this (with some possible variations). Every digit shows a doublet of the Path History Register (PHR).

A doublet is a 2-bit value, and within the PHR, it represents pairs of adjacent bits.

PHR (lsb to msb): 3 1 1 2 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

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