The Performance Cost of Security

Historically, performance has been the most important feature when optimizing computer hardware. Modern processors are so highly optimized that every cycle of computation time matters. However, this practice of optimizing for performance at all costs has been called into question by new microarchite...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Bowen, Lucy R
Format:	Others
Published:	DigitalCommons@CalPoly 2019
Subjects:	Security Microarchitecture Attack Cache Attack Timing Attack Meltdown Spectre Information Security Risk Analysis Systems Architecture
Online Access:	https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/2002 https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3412&context=theses

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spelling	ndltd-CALPOLY-oai-digitalcommons.calpoly.edu-theses-34122021-08-20T05:02:49Z The Performance Cost of Security Bowen, Lucy R Historically, performance has been the most important feature when optimizing computer hardware. Modern processors are so highly optimized that every cycle of computation time matters. However, this practice of optimizing for performance at all costs has been called into question by new microarchitectural attacks, e.g. Meltdown and Spectre. Microarchitectural attacks exploit the effects of microarchitectural components or optimizations in order to leak data to an attacker. These attacks have caused processor manufacturers to introduce performance impacting mitigations in both software and silicon. To investigate the performance impact of the various mitigations, a test suite of forty-seven different tests was created. This suite was run on a series of virtual machines that tested both Ubuntu 16 and Ubuntu 18. These tests investigated the performance change across version updates and the performance impact of CPU core number vs. default microarchitectural mitigations. The testing proved that the performance impact of the microarchitectural mitigations is non-trivial, as the percent difference in performance can be as high as 200%. 2019-06-01T07:00:00Z text application/pdf https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/2002 https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3412&context=theses Master's Theses DigitalCommons@CalPoly Security Microarchitecture Attack Cache Attack Timing Attack Meltdown Spectre Information Security Risk Analysis Systems Architecture
collection	NDLTD
format	Others
sources	NDLTD
topic	Security Microarchitecture Attack Cache Attack Timing Attack Meltdown Spectre Information Security Risk Analysis Systems Architecture
spellingShingle	Security Microarchitecture Attack Cache Attack Timing Attack Meltdown Spectre Information Security Risk Analysis Systems Architecture Bowen, Lucy R The Performance Cost of Security
description	Historically, performance has been the most important feature when optimizing computer hardware. Modern processors are so highly optimized that every cycle of computation time matters. However, this practice of optimizing for performance at all costs has been called into question by new microarchitectural attacks, e.g. Meltdown and Spectre. Microarchitectural attacks exploit the effects of microarchitectural components or optimizations in order to leak data to an attacker. These attacks have caused processor manufacturers to introduce performance impacting mitigations in both software and silicon. To investigate the performance impact of the various mitigations, a test suite of forty-seven different tests was created. This suite was run on a series of virtual machines that tested both Ubuntu 16 and Ubuntu 18. These tests investigated the performance change across version updates and the performance impact of CPU core number vs. default microarchitectural mitigations. The testing proved that the performance impact of the microarchitectural mitigations is non-trivial, as the percent difference in performance can be as high as 200%.
author	Bowen, Lucy R
author_facet	Bowen, Lucy R
author_sort	Bowen, Lucy R
title	The Performance Cost of Security
title_short	The Performance Cost of Security
title_full	The Performance Cost of Security
title_fullStr	The Performance Cost of Security
title_full_unstemmed	The Performance Cost of Security
title_sort	performance cost of security
publisher	DigitalCommons@CalPoly
publishDate	2019
url	https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/2002 https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3412&context=theses
work_keys_str_mv	AT bowenlucyr theperformancecostofsecurity AT bowenlucyr performancecostofsecurity
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The Performance Cost of Security

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