English

Hardening Confidential Federated Compute against Side-channel Attacks

Cryptography and Security 2026-03-24 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms
Authors: James Bell-Clark , Albert Cheu , Adria Gascon , Jonathan Katz
View on arXiv ↗ PDF ↗

Abstract

In this work, we identify a set of side-channels in our Confidential Federated Compute platform that a hypothetical insider could exploit to circumvent differential privacy (DP) guarantees. We show how DP can mitigate two of the side-channels, one of which has been implemented in our open-source library.

Keywords

Confidential computing Federated learning Side-channel attack Differential privacy Security

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.21469,
  title  = {Hardening Confidential Federated Compute against Side-channel Attacks},
  author = {James Bell-Clark and Albert Cheu and Adria Gascon and Jonathan Katz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.21469},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

18 pages

Related papers

View all related →
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Confidential Federated Computations
Hubert Eichner, Daniel Ramage, Kallista Bonawitz, Dzmitry Huba +10
2025-03-04
Machine Learning · Computer Science
Privacy Leakage via Output Label Space and Differentially Private Continual Learning
Marlon Tobaben, Talal Alrawajfeh, Marcus Klasson, Mikko Heikkilä +2
2026-04-27
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Local and Central Differential Privacy for Robustness and Privacy in Federated Learning
Mohammad Naseri, Jamie Hayes, Emiliano De Cristofaro
2022-05-30
Machine Learning · Computer Science
Mitigating Privacy-Utility Trade-off in Decentralized Federated Learning via $f$-Differential Privacy
Xiang Li, Buxin Su, Chendi Wang, Qi Long +1
2025-10-24
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Hybrid Deep Learning Model for Multiple Cache Side Channel Attacks Detection: A Comparative Analysis
Tejal Joshi, Aarya Kawalay, Anvi Jamkhande, Amit Joshi
2025-01-29
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Spy in the GPU-box: Covert and Side Channel Attacks on Multi-GPU Systems
Sankha Baran Dutta, Hoda Naghibijouybari, Arjun Gupta, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh +2
2022-03-31
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Fight Hardware with Hardware: System-wide Detection and Mitigation of Side-Channel Attacks using Performance Counters
Stefano Carnà, Serena Ferracci, Francesco Quaglia, Alessandro Pellegrini
2024-02-22
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Mitigating Leakage from Data Dependent Communications in Decentralized Computing using Differential Privacy
Riad Ladjel, Nicolas Anciaux, Aurélien Bellet, Guillaume Scerri
2021-12-24
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Revisiting and Evaluating Software Side-channel Vulnerabilities and Countermeasures in Cryptographic Applications
Tianwei Zhang, Jun Jiang, Yinqian Zhang
2019-12-13
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
A Survey of Microarchitectural Side-channel Vulnerabilities, Attacks and Defenses in Cryptography
Xiaoxuan Lou, Tianwei Zhang, Jun Jiang, Yinqian Zhang
2021-03-29
Quantum Physics · Physics
Masking Countermeasures Against Side-Channel Attacks on Quantum Computers
Jason T. LeGrow, Travis Morrison, Jamie Sikora, Nicolas Swanson
2025-01-15
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
A Review and Comparison of AI Enhanced Side Channel Analysis
Max Panoff, Honggang Yu, Haoqi Shan, Yier Jin
2024-02-06
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Adversarial Attack Based Countermeasures against Deep Learning Side-Channel Attacks
Ruizhe Gu, Ping Wang, Mengce Zheng, Honggang Hu +1
2024-01-18
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Exploration of Quantum Computer Power Side-Channels
Chuanqi Xu, Ferhat Erata, Jakub Szefer
2023-05-10
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Specification and Verification of Side Channel Declassification
Josef Svenningsson, David Sands
2009-12-16
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Protecting Cryptographic Libraries against Side-Channel and Code-Reuse Attacks
Rodothea Myrsini Tsoupidi, Elena Troubitsyna, Panos Papadimitratos
2026-05-21
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Differentially Private Secure Multi-Party Computation for Federated Learning in Financial Applications
David Byrd, Antigoni Polychroniadou
2020-10-13
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Breaking the Communication-Privacy-Accuracy Tradeoff with $f$-Differential Privacy
Richeng Jin, Zhonggen Su, Caijun Zhong, Zhaoyang Zhang +2
2024-02-02
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Differentially Private Federated Learning: A Client Level Perspective
Robin C. Geyer, Tassilo Klein, Moin Nabi
2018-03-02
Machine Learning · Computer Science
Backdoor Attacks in Peer-to-Peer Federated Learning
Georgios Syros, Gokberk Yar, Simona Boboila, Cristina Nita-Rotaru +1
2024-09-18
Machine Learning · Computer Science
Gradient-Leakage Resilient Federated Learning
Wenqi Wei, Ling Liu, Yanzhao Wu, Gong Su +1
2021-07-05
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Cipherfix: Mitigating Ciphertext Side-Channel Attacks in Software
Jan Wichelmann, Anna Pätschke, Luca Wilke, Thomas Eisenbarth
2023-09-25
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
HowTo Authenticate and Encrypt
Hans-Rudolf Thomann
2007-05-23
Cryptography and Security · Computer Science
Power Side Channels in Security ICs: Hardware Countermeasures
Lu Zhang, Luis Vega, Michael Taylor
2016-05-04
Machine Learning · Computer Science
Federated Learning with Differential Privacy: An Utility-Enhanced Approach
Kanishka Ranaweera, Dinh C. Nguyen, Pubudu N. Pathirana, David Smith +3
2025-03-28