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RingTrace: Model-Free Spatio-Temporal Detection and Core Attribution for Cache Side-Channels
eprint.iacr.orgpaper

RingTrace: Model-Free Spatio-Temporal Detection and Core Attribution for Cache Side-Channels

RingTrace is a monitoring framework that detects Flush+Reload cache side-channel attacks by combining per-core cache-miss counters with slice activity across uncore CBoxes. Its Joint Spatio-Temporal Attribution (JSTA) builds a joint-activity matrix without model training: the largest entry is the screening score and row sums point to a candidate core. The authors report detection before secret leakage, fewer false alarms under heavy memory load, and negligible runtime overhead on commodity processors.

TL;DR Proposes a training-free detector that finds Flush+Reload attacks and the attacking core from core and uncore CBox telemetry.

Organisations named here

  • Joint Spatio-Temporal Attribution
  • JSTA
  • transient-execution attacks

Technologies named here

  • Hardware performance counters

Techniques named here

  • Flush+Reload
  • Core attribution
  • Hierarchical response