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Modern software systems are developed in diverse programming languages and often harbor critical vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit to compromise security. These vulnerabilities have been actively targeted in real-world attacks,…
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…
Side Channel Analysis (SCA) presents a clear threat to privacy and security in modern computing systems. The vast majority of communications are secured through cryptographic algorithms. These algorithms are often provably-secure from a…
Operating Systems enforce logical isolation using abstractions such as processes, containers, and isolation technologies to protect a system from malicious or buggy code. In this paper, we show new types of side channels through the file…
Identifying the software weaknesses exploited by attacks supports efforts to reduce developer introduction of vulnerabilities and to guide security code review efforts. A weakness is a bug or fault type that can be exploited through an…
Vulnerability databases are vital sources of information on emergent software security concerns. Security professionals, from system administrators to developers to researchers, heavily depend on these databases to track vulnerabilities and…
Real-time systems have recently been shown to be vulnerable to timing inference attacks, mainly due to their predictable behavioral patterns. Existing solutions such as schedule randomization lack the ability to protect against such…
Software updates are essential to enhance security, fix bugs, and add better features to the existing software. While some users accept software updates, non-compliance remains a widespread issue. While some users accept software updates,…
Information leaks through side channels are a pervasive problem, even in security-critical applications. Functional side channels arise when an attacker knows that a secret value of a server stays fixed for a certain time. Then, the…
Kernel rootkits provide adversaries with permanent high-privileged access to compromised systems and are often a key element of sophisticated attack chains. At the same time, they enable stealthy operation and are thus difficult to detect.…
In this paper we describe a method for verifying secure information flow of programs, where apart from direct and indirect flows a secret information can be leaked through covert timing channels. That is, no two computations of a program…
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…
Hardware caches are essential performance optimization features in modern processors to reduce the effective memory access time. Unfortunately, they are also the prime targets for attacks on computer processors because they are…
Microarchitectural timing channels are a major threat to computer security. A set of OS mechanisms called time protection was recently proposed as a principled way of preventing information leakage through such channels and prototyped in…
According to recent empirical studies, a majority of users have the same, or very similar, passwords across multiple password-secured online services. This practice can have disastrous consequences, as one password being compromised puts…
Flaws in the process of modulation, or encoding of key bits in the quadratures of the electromagnetic light field, can make continuous-variable quantum key distribution systems susceptible to leakage of secret information. Here, we report…
Intel has introduced a trusted computing technology, Intel Software Guard Extension (SGX), which provides an isolated and secure execution environment called enclave for a user program without trusting any privilege software (e.g., an…
Microarchitectural timing channels enable unwanted information flow across security boundaries, violating fundamental security assumptions. They leverage timing variations of several state-holding microarchitectural components and have been…
Cache side channel attacks are a sophisticated and persistent threat that exploit vulnerabilities in modern processors to extract sensitive information. These attacks leverage weaknesses in shared computational resources, particularly the…
The arm race between hardware security engineers and side-channel researchers has become more competitive with more sophisticated attacks and defenses in the last decade. While modern hardware features improve the system performance…