SECURITY VULNERABILITY MITIGATION USING HARDWARE-SUPPORTED CONTEXT-DEPENDENT ADDRESS SPACE HIDING

Organization Name

Inventor(s)

Nathan Yong Seng Chong of Ponte Vedra FL US

Karimallah Ahmed Mohammed Raslan of Leander TX US

SECURITY VULNERABILITY MITIGATION USING HARDWARE-SUPPORTED CONTEXT-DEPENDENT ADDRESS SPACE HIDING

This abstract first appeared for US patent application 20240256470 titled 'SECURITY VULNERABILITY MITIGATION USING HARDWARE-SUPPORTED CONTEXT-DEPENDENT ADDRESS SPACE HIDING

Original Abstract Submitted

a system, method and processor that mitigates security vulnerabilities using context-dependent address space hiding. in some embodiments, a hardware mechanism allows a more-privileged software component managing multiple less-privileged software components to blind itself against “out-of-context” less-privileged software components. the hardware mechanism can allow the more-privileged software component to dynamically hide a portion of the more-privileged address space related to the “out-of-context” less-privileged software components, based on knowledge of the “in-context” less-privileged software component. a context register is set with a value from which an address range, within the address space of the more-privileged software component, can be determined, where the address range is associated with a first less-privileged software component can be determined. when the more-privileged software component attempts to access data from other less-privileged software components, it is prevented from accessing such data, based at least in part on the context register.