Timing Channels in Cryptography: A Micro-Architectural Perspective

by Chester Rebeiro, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, Sarani Bhattacharya

Overview

This book deals with timing attacks on cryptographic ciphers. It describes and analyzes various unintended covert timing channels that are formed when ciphers are executed in microprocessors. The book considers modern superscalar microprocessors which are enabled with features such as multi-threaded, pipelined, parallel, speculative, and out-of order execution. Various timing attack algorithms are described and analyzed for both block ciphers as well as public-key ciphers. The interplay between the cipher implementation, the system architecture, and the attack's success is analyzed. Further hardware and software countermeasures are discussed with the aim of illustrating methods to build systems that can protect against these attacks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319123691
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	12/12/2014
Edition description:	2015
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

Debdeep Mukhopadhyay is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. Chester Rebeiro is a Post-doc researcher in the department of Computer Science, Columbia University, USA.

Table of Contents

An Introduction to Timing Attacks.- Modern Cryptography.- Superscalar Processors, Cache Memories, and Branch Predictors.- Time-Driven Cache Attacks.- Advanced Time-Driven Cache Attacks on Block Ciphers.- A Formal Analysis of Time-Driven Cache Attacks.- Profiled Time-Driven Cache Attacks on Block Ciphers.- Access-Driven Cache Attacks on Block Ciphers.- Branch Prediction Attacks.- Countermeasures for Timing Attacks.