Towards Micro-architectural Leakage Simulators: Reverse Engineering Micro-architectural Leakage Features Is Practical

Si Gao; Elisabeth Oswald; Dan Page

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07082-2_11

Towards Micro-architectural Leakage Simulators: Reverse Engineering Micro-architectural Leakage Features Is Practical

Si Gao^*, Elisabeth Oswald, Dan Page

^*Corresponding author for this work

Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

Leakage simulators offer the tantalising promise of easy and quick testing of software with respect to the presence of side channel leakage. The quality of their build in leakage models is therefore crucial, this includes the faithful inclusion of micro-architectural leakage. Micro-architectural leakage is a reality even on low- to mid-range commercial processors, such as the ARM Cortex M series. Dealing with it seems initially infeasible in a “grey box” setting: how should we describe it if micro-architectural elements are not publicly known? We demonstrate, for the first time, that it is feasible, using a recent leakage modelling technique, to reverse engineer significant elements of the micro-architectural leakage of a commercial processor. Our approach first recovers the micro-architectural leakage of each stage in the pipeline, and the leakage of elements that are known to produce glitches. Using the reverse engineered leakage features we build an enhanced version of the popular leakage simulator ELMO.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022 - 41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, 2022, Proceedings
Editors	Orr Dunkelman, Stefan Dziembowski
Publisher	Springer
Pages	284-311
Number of pages	28
ISBN (Electronic)	9783031070822
ISBN (Print)	9783031070815
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07082-2_11
Publication status	Published - 25 May 2022
Event	41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2022 - Trondheim, Norway Duration: 30 May 2022 → 3 Jun 2022

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume	13277
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2022
Country/Territory	Norway
City	Trondheim
Period	30/05/22 → 3/06/22

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledments. We would like to thank Ben Marshall for his invaluable insights, which guided us through various mazes in our leakage modelling efforts. Si Gao and Elisabeth Oswald were funded in part by the ERC via the grant SEAL (Project Reference 725042). This work has been supported in part by EPSRC via grant EP/R012288/1, under the RISE (http://www.ukrise.org) programme.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, International Association for Cryptologic Research.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Theoretical Computer Science
General Computer Science

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-031-07082-2_11Licence: None: All rights reserved

Cite this

Gao, S., Oswald, E., & Page, D. (2022). Towards Micro-architectural Leakage Simulators: Reverse Engineering Micro-architectural Leakage Features Is Practical. In O. Dunkelman, & S. Dziembowski (Eds.), Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022 - 41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, 2022, Proceedings (pp. 284-311). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 13277). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07082-2_11

Gao, Si ; Oswald, Elisabeth ; Page, Dan. / Towards Micro-architectural Leakage Simulators : Reverse Engineering Micro-architectural Leakage Features Is Practical. Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022 - 41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, 2022, Proceedings. editor / Orr Dunkelman ; Stefan Dziembowski. Springer, 2022. pp. 284-311 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)).

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abstract = "Leakage simulators offer the tantalising promise of easy and quick testing of software with respect to the presence of side channel leakage. The quality of their build in leakage models is therefore crucial, this includes the faithful inclusion of micro-architectural leakage. Micro-architectural leakage is a reality even on low- to mid-range commercial processors, such as the ARM Cortex M series. Dealing with it seems initially infeasible in a “grey box” setting: how should we describe it if micro-architectural elements are not publicly known? We demonstrate, for the first time, that it is feasible, using a recent leakage modelling technique, to reverse engineer significant elements of the micro-architectural leakage of a commercial processor. Our approach first recovers the micro-architectural leakage of each stage in the pipeline, and the leakage of elements that are known to produce glitches. Using the reverse engineered leakage features we build an enhanced version of the popular leakage simulator ELMO.",

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note = "Funding Information: Acknowledments. We would like to thank Ben Marshall for his invaluable insights, which guided us through various mazes in our leakage modelling efforts. Si Gao and Elisabeth Oswald were funded in part by the ERC via the grant SEAL (Project Reference 725042). This work has been supported in part by EPSRC via grant EP/R012288/1, under the RISE (http://www.ukrise.org) programme. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022, International Association for Cryptologic Research.; 41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2022 ; Conference date: 30-05-2022 Through 03-06-2022",

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Gao, S, Oswald, E & Page, D 2022, Towards Micro-architectural Leakage Simulators: Reverse Engineering Micro-architectural Leakage Features Is Practical. in O Dunkelman & S Dziembowski (eds), Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022 - 41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, 2022, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 13277, Springer, pp. 284-311, 41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2022, Trondheim, Norway, 30/05/22. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07082-2_11

Towards Micro-architectural Leakage Simulators: Reverse Engineering Micro-architectural Leakage Features Is Practical. / Gao, Si; Oswald, Elisabeth; Page, Dan.
Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022 - 41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, 2022, Proceedings. ed. / Orr Dunkelman; Stefan Dziembowski. Springer, 2022. p. 284-311 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 13277).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledments. We would like to thank Ben Marshall for his invaluable insights, which guided us through various mazes in our leakage modelling efforts. Si Gao and Elisabeth Oswald were funded in part by the ERC via the grant SEAL (Project Reference 725042). This work has been supported in part by EPSRC via grant EP/R012288/1, under the RISE (http://www.ukrise.org) programme. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, International Association for Cryptologic Research.

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Gao S, Oswald E, Page D. Towards Micro-architectural Leakage Simulators: Reverse Engineering Micro-architectural Leakage Features Is Practical. In Dunkelman O, Dziembowski S, editors, Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022 - 41st Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, 2022, Proceedings. Springer. 2022. p. 284-311. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)). doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-07082-2_11

Towards Micro-architectural Leakage Simulators: Reverse Engineering Micro-architectural Leakage Features Is Practical

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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Cite this