Assessing Security RISC: Analyzing Flush+Fault Attack on RISC-V Using gem5 Simulator

Mahreen Khan, Maria Mushtaq, Renaud Pacalet, Ludovic Apvrille

2025

Abstract

Microarchitectural side-channel attacks exploit vulnerabilities such as cache behavior to leak sensitive data. These attacks have been extensively studied on x86 architectures but they remain less explored on RISC-V systems. A recent paper (Gerlach et al., 2023) demonstrated existing and novel microarchitectural attacks on RISC-V hardware platforms (C906, U74, C910, C908). This hardware-based analysis, while realistic, lacks the flexibility and detailed behavioral insights needed to fully understand these attacks. Simulation environments like gem5 (Lowe-Power, 2024) provide fine-grained control and diverse metrics to overcome this limitation and observe the attack in detail. In this paper, gem5 is used to explore Flush+Fault (Gerlach et al., 2023) side-channel attack on RISC-V architecture which was originally tested on RISC-V hardware. Through gem5, we analyze detailed insights of attack such as cache patterns, and timing behaviors. Our results demonstrate the gem5’s potential for advancing the understanding of RISC-V microarchitectural vulnerabilities and eventually for developing effective countermeasures.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Khan M., Mushtaq M., Pacalet R. and Apvrille L. (2025). Assessing Security RISC: Analyzing Flush+Fault Attack on RISC-V Using gem5 Simulator. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT; ISBN 978-989-758-760-3, SciTePress, pages 607-612. DOI: 10.5220/0013518800003979

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt25,
author={Mahreen Khan and Maria Mushtaq and Renaud Pacalet and Ludovic Apvrille},
title={Assessing Security RISC: Analyzing Flush+Fault Attack on RISC-V Using gem5 Simulator},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT},
year={2025},
pages={607-612},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013518800003979},
isbn={978-989-758-760-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT
TI - Assessing Security RISC: Analyzing Flush+Fault Attack on RISC-V Using gem5 Simulator
SN - 978-989-758-760-3
AU - Khan M.
AU - Mushtaq M.
AU - Pacalet R.
AU - Apvrille L.
PY - 2025
SP - 607
EP - 612
DO - 10.5220/0013518800003979
PB - SciTePress