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Transient execution attacks, also known as speculative execution attacks, have drawn much interest in the last few years as they can cause critical data leakage. Since the first disclosure of Spectre and Meltdown attacks in January 2018, a number of new transient execution attack types have been demonstrated targeting different processors. A transient execution attack consists of two main components: transient execution itself and a covert channel that is used to actually exfiltrate the information.Transient execution is a result of the fundamental features of modern processors that are designed to boost performance and efficiency, while covert channels are unintended information leakage channels that result from temporal and spatial sharing of the micro-architectural components. Given the severity of the transient execution attacks, they have motivated computer architects in both industry and academia to rethink …