Flushgeist: Cache Leaks from Beyond the Flush

Abstract

Flushing the cache, using instructions like clflush and wbinvd, is commonly proposed as a countermeasure against access-based cache attacks. In this report, we show that several Intel caches, specifically the L1 caches in some pre-Skylake processors and the L2 caches in some post-Broadwell processors, leak information even after being flushed through clflush and wbinvd instructions. That is, security-critical assumptions about the behavior of clflush and wbinvd instructions are incorrect, and countermeasures that rely on them should be revised.