MemShield: GPU-assisted software memory encryption
Abstract
Cryptographic algorithm implementations are vulnerable to Cold Boot attacks, which consist in exploiting the persistence of RAM cells across reboots or power down cycles to read the memory contents and recover precious sensitive data. The principal defensive weapon against Cold Boot attacks is memory encryption. In this work we propose MemShield, a memory encryption framework for user space applications that exploits a GPU to safely store the master key and perform the encryption/decryption operations. We developed a prototype that is completely transparent to existing applications and does not require changes to the OS kernel. We discuss the design, the related works, the implementation, the security analysis, and the performances of MemShield.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2004.09252,
title = {MemShield: GPU-assisted software memory encryption},
author = {Pierpaolo Santucci and Emiliano Ingrassia and Giulio Picierro and Marco Cesati},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.09252},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
14 pages, 2 figures. In proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security, ACNS 2020, October 19-22 2020, Rome, Italy