Related papers: Exploiting CPU Clock Modulation for Covert Communi…
The Least-Recently Used cache replacement policy and its variants are widely deployed in modern processors. This paper shows for the first time in detail that the LRU states of caches can be used to leak information: any access to a cache…
We study a covert queueing channel (CQC) between two users sharing a round robin scheduler. Such a covert channel can arise when users share a resource such as a computer processor or a router arbitrated by a round robin policy. We present…
Caches have been used to construct various types of covert and side channels to leak information. Most existing cache channels exploit the timing difference between cache hits and cache misses. However, we introduce a new and broader…
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…
Timing channels are information flows, encoded in the relative timing of events, that bypass the system's protection mechanisms. Any microarchitectural state that depends on execution history and affects the rate of progress of later…
Electromagnetic (EM) covert channels pose significant threats to computer and communications security in air-gapped networks. Previous works exploit EM radiation from various components (e.g., video cables, memory buses, CPUs) to secretly…
Due to the vital role of security in online communications and this fact that attackers are developing their tools, modernizing the security tools is an essential. The efficiency of crypto systems has been proven after years, however one…
A Covert Channel (CC) exploits legitimate communication mechanisms to stealthily transmit information, often bypassing traditional security controls. Among these, a novel paradigm called History Covert Channels (HCC) leverages past network…
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…
Investigating network covert channels in smartphones has become increasingly important as smartphones have recently replaced the role of traditional computers. Smartphones are subject to traditional computer network covert channel…
Contemporary computing employs cache hierarchy to fill the speed gap between processors and main memories. In order to optimise system performance, Last Level Caches(LLC) are shared among all the cores. Cache sharing has made them an…
Transient execution attacks utilize micro-architectural covert channels to leak secrets that should not have been accessible during logical program execution. Commonly used micro-architectural covert channels are those that leave lasting…
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…
In this paper we show how attackers can covertly leak data (e.g., encryption keys, passwords and files) from highly secure or air-gapped networks via the row of status LEDs that exists in networking equipment such as LAN switches and…
Covert communication is the undetected transmission of sensitive information over a communication channel. In wireless communication systems, channel impairments such as signal fading present challenges in the effective implementation and…
In the last two decades, the evolving cyber-threat landscape has brought to center stage the contentious tradeoffs between the security and performance of modern microprocessors. The guarantees provided by the hardware to ensure no…
In this work, we propose a novel framework to identify and mitigate a recently disclosed covert channel scheme exploiting unprotected broadcast messages in cellular MAC layer protocols. Examples of covert channel are used in data…
High-speed interconnects, such as NVLink, are integral to modern multi-GPU systems, acting as a vital link between CPUs and GPUs. This study highlights the vulnerability of multi-GPU systems to covert and side channel attacks due to…
We introduce IMPACT, a set of high-throughput main memory-based timing attacks that leverage characteristics of processing-in-memory (PiM) architectures to establish covert and side channels. IMPACT enables high-throughput communication and…
We consider covert communication using a queuing timing channel in the presence of a warden. The covert message is encoded using the inter-arrival times of the packets, and the legitimate receiver and the warden observe the inter-departure…