What is Speculative execution?
A CPU technique that executes instructions ahead based on predictions, such as branch outcomes, before they are known. Wrong results are discarded, but traces such as cache state may remain.
Field: Hardware Security
Speculative execution in the explanations
Even when software is written correctly, secrets can leak or defenses can fail through speculative execution and caches added for performance, power and timing that vary with processing, malfunctions under abnormal voltage or temperature, or circuitry inserted during manufacturing.
Which best describes the problems addressed by hardware sec…Speculative execution, branch prediction and shared caches underpin modern CPU performance.
Which statement about countermeasures to speculative-execut…
Questions that mention Speculative execution (4)
- Which is an example of vulnerabilities revealing attacks that exploit traces of speculative execution left in the cache to infer data that should not be accessible?
- What is the principle behind the speculative execution vulnerability known as Spectre?
- Which best describes the problems addressed by hardware security?
- Which statement about countermeasures to speculative-execution vulnerabilities is generally correct?
Related terms
Spectre Meltdown Branch prediction Anti-rollback protection Cold boot attack Constant-time implementation Counterfeit chip eFuse Fault injection attack Hardware Trojan