TEEM - A CPU Emulator with Transient Execution

Open Access Paper: TEEM: A CPU Emulator for Teaching Transient Execution Attacks (2024)

TEEM in Action: Exploring the Meltdown example

System requirements and installation

The following things need to be installed to run TEEM:

Python >= 3.8
Python-Benedict
Python-Prompt-Toolkit

To install the required packages, one may use the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the program

The syntax for running TEEM from the root folder of the repository is:

./main.py <path_to_target_program>

On Windows systems, the following command should be used instead:

python main.py <path_to_target_program>

There are demo programs available in the demo folder, including sample attacks using meltdown and spectre.

The syntax of programs accepted by the emulator is described in doc/assembly.md and doc/isa.md.

Configuration

Edit config.yml to change the default settings.

Compiling C code

TEEM is able to run RISC-V assembly compiled from C code.

For successful compilation you need clang 17+ and can utilize the Makefile in the demo directory.

Copyright & License

SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You may obtain a copy of the License in the LICENSE.txt file, or at: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt

Teem

Install / Use

README