Designing an Educational Tool for Understanding Spectre Attack

Abstract

This thesis presents an educational framework designed to inform users about Spectre vulnerabilities, a hardware vulnerability that affects many modern computer architectures. The goal of these is to provide essential knowledge about the Spectre vulnerabilities through a real-time interactive visualization and a learning tool. This would allow users to see what is going on in the CPU as the Spectre attacks occur, how they exploit speculative execution in CPUs, and see what is happening under the cache in real time. The thesis will go over the development of the tool and learning materials, which includes a comprehensive guide on an example of a Spectre attack, real-world examples, and additional materials necessary for an audience with no background knowledge to fully understand what the Spectre vulnerabilities are. In short, by providing I hope to provide information to the general public that aims to make them aware and knowledgeable of these complex security threats among a wide audience, from cybersecurity professionals to individuals with a general interest in computer security.