Microarchitectural Attacks and Defenses (MAD)

A tutorial at ISCA 2023 on Sunday June 18th Orlando

The MAD (microarchitecture attacks and defenses) tutorial will happen again this year, co-located with ISCA'23 in Orlando. 

About The Tutorial

With the rise of cloud computing and internet services, microarchitectural attacks (i.e., microarchitectural side/covert channels, Spectre/Meltdown, Rowhammer) have emerged as a central threat to computer systems.  These attacks exploit microarchitectural details to undermine program integrity/confidentiality and have enabled a menagerie of interesting (but unwanted!) capabilities---ranging from opening communication channels between otherwise isolated processes, leaking attacker-selected bits of a program's secret data, achieving privilege escalation in memory-safe code and more. 

The goal of the tutorial is to bring together researchers from industry and academia that want to learn about the state-of-the-art in both microarchitectural attack and defense research.  The tutorial will include two main components:

Theory: Breadth-Depth Talks and Discussion

A series of talks by the organizers covering from basic to advanced concepts in microarchitectural attacks and defenses. We will also have keynote speakers give a talk on the future of microarchitectural security and major open challenges.

Practice: Hands-on Hacking Session and Capture the Flag

The organizers will host a hands-on hacking session where participants get access to working covert channel code/Spectre and be able to modify it & see the effects of those changes on channel bandwidth, etc.  The tutorial will also feature a capture-the-flag session that will commence at tutorial end and run for the subsequent week (with prizes going to the winners!).  So please bring a laptop!

Intended Audience & Prerequisite Knowledge

The tutorial is targeted at people with backgrounds in Architecture/Systems/Compilers/PL that want to learn about the state-of-the-art in microarchitectural attacks and (potentially) engage in related defensive/offensive research.  No prior background in security is needed (beginners welcome) but we will cover advanced topics & try to spark discussion throughout the day (so, experts also welcome).

Tutorial Schedule (as of June 13)


Lunch Time (12:30-02:00 PM)


Organizers