12 Dec
2015
12 Dec
'15
8:56 a.m.
While pulling up the Haskell model to respond to the previous question, I noted the following statement: "The idle thread's code is at an arbitrary location in kernel memory. For convenience in the Haskell model, we place it in the globals frame, but there is no need for it to be in user-accessible memory." Given that the globals frame is mapped cacheable, doesn't this lead to a potential timing side channel? Tasks would be able to determine whether the idle thread's code has been evicted from cache, which may or may not reveal something interesting about the state of the system as a whole. -- Brian Mastenbrook CTO Wearable Inc. Makers of AirStash