SnapMem: Hardware/Software Cooperative Memory Resistant to Cache-Related Attacks on ARM-FPGA Embedded SoC

ARM-FPGA embedded SoCs have been widely used in the fields of 5G Wireless, next-generation advanced driver-assistance systems (ADASs) and Industrial Internet of Things due to its high performance and hardware design flexibility. However, this type of SoC suffers various security threats, one of which is cross-domain cache-related attacks, such as Flush+Reload, Flush+Flush, and Meltdown and Spectre. Many hardware and software defenses have been proposed to resist these cross-domain cache-related attacks. However, hardware defenses require modifications of basic architecture, which cannot be deployed on existing devices. On the other hand, software runtime defenses have incomplete coverage or introduce significant performance overhead. In this article, we propose SnapMem, a hardware/software cooperative memory that can make sensitive data burn after reading on ARM-FPGA embedded SoC. Any process can only access the SnapMem created by itself. Through the cooperation of software and hardware, SnapMem can transfer sensitive data in or out of main memory in real time. Based on this burn-after-reading mechanism, SnapMem can effectively prevent attackers from stealing sensitive data of the victim process or kernel space. Security and performance evaluations show that SnapMem can resist all cross-domain cache-related attacks while introducing lower performance overhead than other software runtime defenses on ARM-FPGA embedded SoC.