research-article

Deconstructing new cache designs for thwarting software cache-based side channel attacks

Authors:

Jean-Pierre Seifert,

Huiyang ZhouAuthors Info & Claims

CSAW '08: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Computer security architectures

Pages 25 - 34

https://doi.org/10.1145/1456508.1456514

Published: 31 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Software cache-based side channel attacks present a serious tthreat to computer systems. Previously proposed countermeasures were either too costly for practical use or only effective against particular attacks. Thus, a recent work identified cache interferences in general as the root cause and proposed two new cache designs, namely partition-locked cache (PLcache) and random permutation cache(RPcache), to defeat cache-based side channel attacks by eliminating/obfuscating cache interferences. In this paper, we analyze these new cache designs and identify significant vulnerabilities and shortcomings of those new cache designs. We also propose possible solutions and improvements over the original new cache designs to overcome the identified shortcomings.

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Cited By

Mosquera FEkanayake AHua WKavi KMehta GJohn L(2024)SecurityCloak: Protection against cache timing and speculative memory access attacksJournal of Systems Architecture10.1016/j.sysarc.2024.103107150(103107)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2024.103107
Jin HHe ZQiang W(2023)SpecTerminator: Blocking Speculative Side Channels Based on Instruction Classes on RISC-VACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization10.1145/356605320:1(1-26)Online publication date: 10-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3566053
Mosquera FKavi KMehta GJohn L(2023)Guard Cache: Creating False Cache Hits and Misses To Mitigate Side-Channel Attacks2023 Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference (SVCC)10.1109/SVCC56964.2023.10165527(1-8)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SVCC56964.2023.10165527
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Deconstructing new cache designs for thwarting software cache-based side channel attacks

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cover image ACM Conferences

CSAW '08: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Computer security architectures

October 2008

72 pages

ISBN:9781605583006

DOI:10.1145/1456508

Program Chair:
Trent Jaeger
PennsylvaniaStateUniversity

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 31 October 2008

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CCS08: 15th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security 2008

October 31, 2008

Virginia, Alexandria, USA

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Cited By

Mosquera FEkanayake AHua WKavi KMehta GJohn L(2024)SecurityCloak: Protection against cache timing and speculative memory access attacksJournal of Systems Architecture10.1016/j.sysarc.2024.103107150(103107)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2024.103107
Jin HHe ZQiang W(2023)SpecTerminator: Blocking Speculative Side Channels Based on Instruction Classes on RISC-VACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization10.1145/356605320:1(1-26)Online publication date: 10-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3566053
Mosquera FKavi KMehta GJohn L(2023)Guard Cache: Creating False Cache Hits and Misses To Mitigate Side-Channel Attacks2023 Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference (SVCC)10.1109/SVCC56964.2023.10165527(1-8)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SVCC56964.2023.10165527
Mosquera FKavi KMehta GJohn L(2023)Guard Cache: Creating Noisy Side-ChannelsIEEE Computer Architecture Letters10.1109/LCA.2023.328971022:2(97-100)Online publication date: Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/LCA.2023.3289710
Sakalis CKaxiras SSjälander M(2022)Delay-on-Squash: Stopping Microarchitectural Replay Attacks in Their TracksACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization10.1145/356369520:1(1-24)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563695
Dhavlle ARafatirad SKhasawneh KHomayoun HDinakarrao S(2022)Imitating Functional Operations for Mitigating Side-Channel LeakageIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2021.307024341:4(868-881)Online publication date: Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2021.3070243
Nelson CIzraelevitz JBahar RLehman T(2022)Eliminating Micro-Architectural Side-Channel Attacks using Near Memory Processing2022 IEEE International Symposium on Secure and Private Execution Environment Design (SEED)10.1109/SEED55351.2022.00023(179-189)Online publication date: Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SEED55351.2022.00023
Song WLi BXue ZLi ZWang WLiu P(2021)Randomized Last-Level Caches Are Still Vulnerable to Cache Side-Channel Attacks! But We Can Fix It2021 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP40001.2021.00050(955-969)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/SP40001.2021.00050
Kaur JDas S(2021)A Survey on Cache Timing Channel Attacks for Multicore ProcessorsJournal of Hardware and Systems Security10.1007/s41635-021-00115-35:2(169-189)Online publication date: 19-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41635-021-00115-3
Rebeiro CMukhopadhyay D(2021)A Formal Analysis of Prefetching in Profiled Cache-Timing Attacks on Block CiphersJournal of Cryptology10.1007/s00145-021-09394-z34:3Online publication date: 20-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00145-021-09394-z
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