AMuLeT: Automated Design-Time Testing of Secure Speculation Countermeasures

In recent years, several hardware-based countermeasures proposed to mitigate Spectre attacks have been shown to be insecure. To enable the development of effective secure speculation countermeasures, we need easy-to-use tools that can automatically test their security guarantees early-on in the design phase to facilitate rapid prototyping.

This paper develops AMuLeT, the first tool capable of testing secure speculation countermeasures for speculative leakage early in their design phase in simulators. Our key idea is to leverage model-based relational testing tools that can detect speculative leaks in commercial CPUs, and apply them to micro-architectural simulators to test secure speculation defenses. We identify and overcome several challenges,