Transient-Execution Attacks: Understanding Meltdown and Spectre

Beyond software-based side-channel attacks there is a new class of attacks called transient-execution attacks. These attacks go beyond leaking meta-data and directly retrieve secret data but they use side channels as an data exfiltration mechanism to transmit the secret data to an attacker-controlled application. We will look at the most prominent of these attacks: Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow, and ZombieLoad. You will implement some of these attacks yourself and learn how to mitigate them.