Artifact – RISCy Cache Coherence: Timer-Free Architectural Cache Attacks via Instruction/Data Cache Incoherence

This repository contains the artifact for the paper "RISCy Cache Coherence: Timer-Free Architectural Cache Attacks via Instruction/Data Cache Incoherence". It is archived on Zenodo.

Note

This repository relies on Git LFS to handle large files. Please install it before cloning the repository. If you cloned without having LFS installed or have other problems with LFS files run: git lfs install && git lfs pull.

Abstract

This artifact accompanies "RISCy Cache Coherence: Timer-Free Architectural Cache Attacks via Instruction/Data Cache Incoherence" and provides the code and data for reproducing the paper's experiments. It covers the instruction/data-cache inconsistency analysis, prevalence and performance evaluations of building blocks B1/B2 and ICSC covert channels, and the case studies (Spectral, AES T-tables, and shared-library user-input leakage). The repository also includes helper tooling for cross-machine experiment orchestration, standalone table/figure generation, and software mitigation evaluation.

Structure

The repository is organized into the following files/directories:

• bin: Shared tooling, including run-and-gather for multi-machine execution.
• experiments: All paper experiments and case studies.
• kernel_modules: Optional platform-specific kernel helpers.

For Artifact Evaluation instructions, see ARTIFACT_EVALUATION.md.

Set Up

The artifact uses Nix to provide the required compilers, a LaTeX compiler, and python packages. Nix is a declarative package manager, i.e., needed packages can be specified in a file, locked via a lock file and then loaded reproducibly. All packages are declared in the top-level flake.nix. Nix can be installed on a large range of Linux distributions.

1. Please install Nix. We recommend the multi-user installation if root privileges are available.

2. The artifacts further use an experimental Nix feature called Flakes. This feature needs to be enabled by running the following command:

   mkdir -p ~/.config/nix && echo 'experimental-features = nix-command flakes' > ~/.config/nix/nix.conf

3. Quickly verify that Nix Flakes work by running:

   nix run 'nixpkgs#hello'

   This should print "Hello, world!".

Quick Start & Basic Tests

To enter a bash shell that has all the packages installed run the following command in the top-level directory:

nix develop

Note

Loading the environment can take some time, depending on the host architecture. This is because some of the packages have to be partially build from source. We recommend and support x86 machines, however others might work as well.

Please run this command in the top-level (this) directory to verify that a static (cross-)compiler for each architecture is available:

which loongarch64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc && which aarch64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc && which riscv64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc

Expected output:

/nix/store/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-loongarch64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc-wrapper-14.3.0/bin/loongarch64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc
/nix/store/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc-wrapper-14.3.0/bin/aarch64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc
/nix/store/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-riscv64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc-wrapper-14.3.0/bin/riscv64-unknown-linux-musl-gcc

If you find any runtime or compilation errors it is likely that the Nix setup is somehow corrupted, as the artifact should provide all packages needed to run every experiment.