Memory Access Safety-Checking Tools for Programs that Share Memory with Devices

The research by Dr. Adam Morrison (TAU) and Prof. Dan Tsafrir (Technion) has resulted in top recognition in Computer Security. Graduate student Ofek Kirzner and Dr. Adam Morrison of Tel Aviv University have received the Distinguished Paper Award Winner and First Prize winner of the 2021 Internet Defense Prize for their paper “An Analysis of Speculative Type Confusion Vulnerabilities in the Wild.” Presented at USENIX Security Symposium, a premier computer security conference, the work defines “speculative type confusion,” an issue where branch mispredictions cause a victim program to execute with variables holding values of the wrong type. The impact in this scenario is that the victim program leaks sensitive memory content.