Course Schedule, Reading List, and Slides
Fall 2026
L Lecture given by the instructor D Paper discussion led by student presenters
Week 1: Bootstrap
Aug 26Wed
L Topic Overview and Project Ideas
Materials: Slides
Week 2: uArch Side Channels
Aug 31Mon
L Cache-Based Side Channels (w/ Demo!)
Pre-lecture: Flush+Reload: A High Resolution, Low Noise, L3 Cache Side-Channel Attack (USENIX Sec '14, Sections 1-3) Link
Post-lecture: Choose one to review:
- Last-Level Cache Side-Channel Attacks are Practical (SP '15) Link
- Theory and Practice of Finding Eviction Sets (SP '19) Link
Materials: Slides, PoC
Sep 2Wed
L Side Channels in Public Clouds (w/ Demo!)
Pre-lecture: Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud: Exploring Information Leakage in Third-Party Compute Clouds (CCS '09, Sections 1-3, 6) Link
Post-lecture: Everywhere All at Once: Co-Location Attacks on Public Cloud FaaS (ASPLOS '24) Link
Materials: Slides
Week 3: uArch Side Channels
Sep 9Wed
L Partitioning, Randomization, and Detection
Pre-lecture: CATalyst: Defeating Last-Level Cache Side Channel Attacks in Cloud Computing (HPCA '16, Sections 1-3) Link
Note: No post-lecture reading; please focus on your term project proposal.
Optional: A Game of Cache Attacks and Defense by Moinuddin Qureshi at MAD tutorial (ISCA '22) Link
Materials: Slides
Week 4: Data-Oblivious Computation and Speculation
Sep 14Mon
L Data-Oblivious Computation
Pre-lecture: Guidelines for Mitigating Timing Side Channels Against Cryptographic Implementations by Intel Link
Optional:
- Oblivious RAM by Elaine Shi Link
- Cryptocoding by Jean-Philippe Aumasson Link
Materials: Slides, PoC
Sep 16Wed
L Transient-Execution Attacks (w/ Demo!)
Pre-lecture: Conference presentation of Spectre Attacks Link
Optional:
- Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution Link
- Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space Link
- A Systematic Evaluation of Transient Execution Attacks and Defenses Link
Materials: Slides, PoC
Week 5: Speculation
Sep 21Mon
D Advanced Spectre Attacks
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- An Analysis of Speculative Type Confusion Vulnerabilities in the Wild (USENIX Sec '21) Link
- Branch History Injection: On the Effectiveness of Hardware Mitigations Against Cross-Privilege Spectre-v2 Attacks (USENIX Sec '22) Link
Optional:
- Retpoline: a software construct for preventing branch-target-injection Link
- RETBLEED: Arbitrary Speculative Code Execution with Return Instructions Link
- The AMD Branch (Mis)predictor: Just Set it and Forget it! (Part 1, Part 2)
Sep 23Wed
D Hardware Defenses
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- Efficient Invisible Speculative Execution through Selective Delay and Value Prediction (ISCA '19) Link
- Speculative Taint Tracking (STT): A Comprehensive Protection for Speculatively Accessed Data (MICRO '19) Link
Optional:
- Speculative interference attacks: breaking invisible speculation schemes Link
- Speculative Data-Oblivious Execution: Mobilizing Safe Prediction For Safe and Efficient Speculative Execution Link
Week 6: Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs)
Sep 28Mon
L TEE Overview and Attestation
Optional: Intel SGX Explained Link
Materials: Slides
Sep 30Wed
L Memory Encryption and Integrity Protection
Optional:
- Efficient Memory Integrity Verification and Encryption for Secure Processors Link
- Using Address Independent Seed Encryption and Bonsai Merkle Trees to Make Secure Processors OS- and Performance-Friendly Link
Materials: Slides
Week 7: Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs)
Oct 5Mon
L TEE Designs
Pre-lecture: (Presentation) Keystone: An Open Framework for Architecting Trusted Execution Environments Link
Materials: Slides
Oct 7Wed
D Attacks on TEEs
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- Controlled-Channel Attacks: Deterministic Side Channels for Untrusted Operating Systems (SP '15) Link
- MicroScope: Enabling Microarchitectural Replay Attacks (ISCA '19) Link
Week 8: Isolation and Memory Safety
Oct 12Mon
L OS and VM Isolation
Optional:
- Performance Evaluation of Intel EPT Hardware Assist Link
- A Comparison of Software and Hardware Techniques for x86 Virtualization Link
- My VM is Lighter (and Safer) than your Container Link
- Firecracker: Lightweight Virtualization for Serverless Applications Link
- Blending Containers and Virtual Machines: A Study of Firecracker and gVisor Link
Materials: Slides
Oct 14Wed
L Memory Safety
Pre-lecture: Running a Buffer Overflow Attack - Computerphile Link
Optional:
- SoK: Eternal War in Memory Link
- An Introduction to CHERI Link
- No-FAT: Architectural Support for Low Overhead Memory Safety Checks Link
- SPECCFI: Mitigating Spectre Attacks using CFI Informed Speculation Link
Materials: Slides
Week 9: Isolation and Memory Safety
Oct 19Mon
D In-Process Isolation
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- Donky: Domain Keys–Efficient In-Process Isolation for RISC-V and x86 (USENIX '20) Link
- Going beyond the Limits of SFI: Flexible and Secure Hardware-Assisted In-Process Isolation with HFI (ASPLOS '23) Link
Oct 21Wed
D Transient Execution + Memory Safety
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- Speculative Probing: Hacking Blind in the Spectre Era (CCS '20) Link
- PACMAN: Attacking ARM Pointer Authentication with Speculative Execution (ISCA '22) Link
Week 10: RowHammer and Inspiring Papers/Ideas
Oct 26Mon
L RowHammer
Optional:
- The Story of Rowhammer Link
- Flipping Bits in Memory Without Accessing Them: An Experimental Study of DRAM Disturbance Errors Link
- Graphene: Strong yet Lightweight RowHammer Protection Link
- ProTRR: Principled yet Optimal In-DRAM Target Row Refresh Link
Materials: Slides
Oct 28Wed
D Attacking AI Systems
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- MoEcho: Exploiting Side-Channel Attacks to Compromise User Privacy in Mixture-of-Experts LLMs (CCS '25) Link
- I Know What You Asked: Prompt Leakage via KV-Cache Sharing in Multi-Tenant LLM Serving (NDSS '25) Link
Week 11: Inspiring Papers/Ideas
Nov 2Mon
D Emerging TEE Designs
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- Graviton: Trusted Execution Environments on GPUs (OSDI '18) Link
- Sequestered Encryption: A Hardware Technique for Comprehensive Data Privacy (SEED '22) Link
Optional:
- Creating the First Confidential GPUs Link
- Security Verification of Low-Trust Architectures (CCS '23) Link
- Privacy-enhanced computation via sequestered encryption (US Patent) Link
Nov 4Wed
D uArch Weird Machines
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- Computing with Time: Microarchitectural Weird Machines (ASPLOS '21) Link
- The Gates of Time: Improving Cache Attacks with Transient Execution (USENIX Sec '23) Link
Week 12: Inspiring Papers/Ideas
Nov 9Mon
Paper to discuss: Choose one to review:
- Complete Information Flow Tracking from the Gates Up (ASPLOS '09) Link
- Speculative Privacy Tracking (SPT): Leaking Information From Speculative Execution Without Compromising Privacy (MICRO '21) Link
Materials: Slides
Nov 11Wed
D Fun Side Channels
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- Hertzbleed: Turning Power Side-Channel Attacks Into Remote Timing Attacks on x86 (USENIX Sec '22) Link
- Pentimento: Data Remanence in Cloud FPGAs (ASPLOS '24) Link
Optional:
- DVFS Frequently Leaks Secrets: Hertzbleed Attacks Beyond SIKE, Cryptography, and CPU-Only Data Link
- Hot Pixels: Frequency, Power, and Temperature Attacks on GPUs and Arm SoCs Link
- Advice from DJB Link
Week 13: Inspiring Papers/Ideas
Nov 16Mon
D Attacks on GPU
Paper to discuss:
- BarraCUDA: Edge GPUs do Leak DNN Weights (USENIX Sec '25) Link
- GPU.zip: On the Side-Channel Implications of Hardware-Based Graphical Data Compression (SP '24) Link
Optional:
- On Subnormal Floating Point and Abnormal Timing Link
- Pixnapping Attack Link
Nov 18Wed
D SW & HW Fuzzing
Papers to discuss: Choose one to review:
- SpecFuzz: Bringing Spectre-Type Vulnerabilities to the Surface (USENIX Sec '20) Link
- Cascade: CPU Fuzzing via Intricate Program Generation (USENIX Sec '24) Link
Optional videos on hardware fuzzing:
- The Discovery of Zenbleed ft. Tavis Ormandy by LiveOverflow Link
- Breaking the x86 Instruction Set by Christopher Domas at BlackHat '17 Link
Week 14: Fall Break
Nov 23-Nov 28Mon-Sat
Fall Break
Optional reading: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Week 15: Summary and Project Presentations
Nov 30Mon
Reflect and Chat (with free food!)
Dec 2Wed
Final Presentation (1)
Week 16: Project Presentations
Dec 7Mon
Final Presentation (2)