references.md

Reference documentation on the Arm64 architecture

Contents:

• Arm documentation
• Third party documentation
• Bug reports

Arm documentation

• Arm Architecture Reference Manual for A-profile architecture
• Feature names in A-profile architecture
• Arm ISA and system registers XML reference

Third party documentation

• Control Flow Integrity, anti-malware active protection on Arm64 systems (SiPearl)
• Pointer Authentication implementation (Apple LLVM project)
• Pointer Authentication on ARMv8.3 - Design and Analysis of the New Software Security Instructions (Qualcomm)
• The QARMA-64 algorithm (used in pointer authentication codes)
• QARMA-64 reference implementation (shared by Phantom1003 on GitHub)
• In-Kernel Control-Flow Integrity on Commodity OSes using ARM Pointer Authentication
• ARM Pointer Authentication based Forward-Edge and Backward-Edge Control Flow Integrity for Kernels (Zhejiang University)
• Examining Pointer Authentication on the iPhone XS (Google Project Zero)
• Demystifying Pointer Authentication on Apple M1 (32nd USENIX Security Symposium, August 2023)

Bug reports

While working on this project, a few defects were found in the clang (LLVM) compiler for Arm64.

• LLVM clang bug report, incorrect generated code with options -arch arm64e -mbranch-protection=pac-bti, don't use them together.
• Apple LLVM clang bug report, request to reduce call sequences of C++ virtual functions from 9 to 7 instructions in arm64e mode.