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Abstract

This talk provides a comprehensive evolution of microarchitectural vulnerabilities, tracing the shift from cryptographic side-channel attacks to transient execution attacks like Spectre and Meltdown, and into emerging logical and physical property exploits. It examines the current landscape of hardware security, discusses the limitations of current mitigations (such as microcode and "chicken bits"), and explores future threats in specialized compute units like GPUs and NPUs. The session offers critical insights into how performance-driven architectural changes create new attack surfaces and how the industry is moving toward more configurable, software-influenced hardware defenses.