Related papers: Frequency Throttling Side-Channel Attack
Covert channels are communication channels used by attackers to transmit information from a compromised system when the access control policy of the system does not allow doing so. Previous work has shown that CPU frequency scaling can be…
Recently discovered Spectre and meltdown attacks affects almost all processors by leaking confidential information to other processes through side-channel attacks. These vulnerabilities expose design flaws in the architecture of modern…
Modern computer processors use microarchitectural optimization mechanisms to improve performance. As a downside, such optimizations are prone to introducing side-channel vulnerabilities. Speculative loading of memory, called prefetching, is…
Cryptographic research takes software timing side channels seriously. Approaches to mitigate them include constant-time coding and techniques to enforce such practices. However, recent attacks like Meltdown [42], Spectre [37], and…
The side-channel attack is an attack method based on the information gained about implementations of computer systems, rather than weaknesses in algorithms. Information about system characteristics such as power consumption, electromagnetic…
Power analysis is a branch of side channel attacks where power consumption data is used as the side channel to attack the system. First using a device like an oscilloscope power traces are collected when the cryptographic device is doing…
Context switching is utilized by operating systems to change the execution context between application programs. It involves saving and restoring the states of multiple registers and performing a pipeline flush to remove any pre-fetched…
Covert channel attacks represent a significant threat to system security, leveraging shared resources to clandestinely transmit information from highly secure systems, thereby violating the system's security policies. These attacks exploit…
Side-channel attacks are efficient attacks against cryptographic devices. They use only quantities observable from outside, such as the duration and the power consumption. Attacks against synchronous devices using electric observations are…
Mathematically-secure cryptographic algorithms leak significant side channel information through their power supplies when implemented on a physical platform. These side channel leakages can be exploited by an attacker to extract the secret…
We introduce a new timing side-channel attack on Intel CPU processors. Our Frontal attack exploits timing differences that arise from how the CPU frontend fetches and processes instructions while being interrupted. In particular, we observe…
Multi-process concurrency is effective in improving program efficiency and maximizing CPU utilization. The correct execution of concurrency is ensured by the mutual exclusion and synchronization mechanism (MESM) that manages the shared…
Power side-channel (PSC) attacks are widely used in embedded microcontrollers, particularly in cryptographic applications, to extract sensitive information. However, expanding the applications of PSC attacks to broader security contexts in…
Modern processors use branch prediction and speculative execution to maximize performance. For example, if the destination of a branch depends on a memory value that is in the process of being read, CPUs will try guess the destination and…
With the rapidly growing interest in quantum computing also grows the importance of securing these quantum computers from various physical attacks. Constantly increasing qubit counts and improvements to the fidelity of the quantum computers…
Modern processors are highly optimized systems where every single cycle of computation time matters. Many optimizations depend on the data that is being processed. Software-based microarchitectural attacks exploit effects of these…
Physical side-channel attacks can compromise the security of integrated circuits. Most physical side-channel attacks (e.g., power or electromagnetic) exploit the dynamic behavior of a chip, typically manifesting as changes in current…
Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols are proven secure based on fundamental physical laws, however, the proofs consider a well-defined setting and encoding of the sent quantum signals only. Side channels, where the encoded quantum state…
The security of computers is at risk because of information leaking through physical outputs such as power, temperature, or electromagnetic (EM) emissions. Attackers can use advanced signal measurement and analysis to recover sensitive data…
The transient-execution attack Meltdown leaks sensitive information by transiently accessing inaccessible data during out-of-order execution. Although Meltdown is fixed in hardware for recent CPU generations, most currently-deployed CPUs…