Spectre Attacks Exploiting Speculative Execution

This course covers the learning outcomes and goals of understanding Spectre attacks exploiting speculative execution. Students will learn about the vulnerabilities in modern processors due to branch prediction and speculative execution, leading to potential security breaches. The course teaches about practical attacks that can read arbitrary memory from a victim's process and how speculative execution implementations can compromise various software security mechanisms. The teaching method involves a presentation on the topic, including methodology from side channel attacks, fault attacks, and return-oriented programming. The intended audience for this course includes hardware architects, software developers, and individuals interested in computer security and processor design.