WarpGuard: Towards Control-Flow Attestation for Heterogeneous CPU-GPU Execution

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.13640v1
• Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2026 09:32:43 GMT
• Title: WarpGuard: Towards Control-Flow Attestation for Heterogeneous CPU-GPU Execution
• Abstract summary: We present WarpGuard, the first composite CFA framework for heterogeneous CPU-GPU workloads.<n>It verifies execution against a unified control-flow graph (CFG) that captures both CPU and GPU components.<n>We implement WarpGuard using software-based instrumentation, requiring no specialized hardware or binary modifications.
• Score: 5.687515869589544
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Heterogeneous CPU-GPU workloads are increasingly used in safety-critical embedded systems, yet no existing approach provides joint attestation of their execution. Prior Control-Flow Attestation (CFA) techniques focus on CPU-side CFA, while GPU attestation is limited to static, load-time verification and does not provide runtime guarantees. As a result, runtime attacks on GPU kernels and violations of the CPU-GPU interaction contract remain unaddressed. We present WarpGuard, the first composite CFA framework for heterogeneous CPU-GPU workloads. WarpGuard verifies execution against a unified control-flow graph (CFG) that captures both CPU and GPU components. It extends prior CFA techniques in two ways: it enables runtime CFA of GPU kernels by tracing their execution against kernel-specific CFGs, and it monitors kernel launch events and enforces per-call site policies to detect violations at the CPU-GPU boundary. These extensions address challenges arising from GPU parallelism and cross-device interactions. We implement WarpGuard using software-based instrumentation, requiring no specialized hardware or binary modifications. Our evaluation on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano shows that WarpGuard detects GPU-side control-flow and cross-boundary attacks. Across microbenchmarks, SPECAccel, and eight TensorRT inference workloads, WarpGuard incurs moderate overheads, suggesting practicality for embedded safety-critical settings.

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