KEYWORDS

1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Outline and Contributions

2 TRANSIENT EXECUTION ATTACK SCENARIOS
2.1 Attacker’s Goal: Breaking Security Boundaries
2.2 Phases of the Attack
2.3 Transient Execution by the Victim vs. the Attacker

3 TRANSIENT EXECUTION
3.1 Causes of Transient Execution
3.2 Causes of Transient Execution in Known Attacks
3.3 Metrics for Causes of Transient Execution
3.4 Security Boundaries that are Broken
3.5 Required Control of the Victim’s Execution
3.6 Required Sharing during Transient Execution
3.7 Speculative Window Size

4 COVERT CHANNELS
4.1 Assumptions about Covert Channels
4.2 Types of Covert Channels
4.3 Volatile Covert Channels
4.4 Persistent Covert Channels
4.5 Metrics for Covert Channels
4.6 Comparison of Covert Channels
4.7 Disclosure Gadget

5 EXISTING TRANSIENT EXECUTION ATTACKS
5.1 Existing Transient Execution Attacks Types
5.2 Feasibility of Existing Attacks
5.3 Attacks on Different Commercial Platforms

6 MITIGATIONS OF SPECTRE-TYPE ATTACKS IN MICRO-ARCHITECTURE DESIGN
6.1 Mitigating Transient Execution
6.2 Mitigating Covert Channels

7 CONCLUSION