Abstract
Timing side-channel attacks remain a major challenge for software security, in particular for cryptographic implementations. Multiple countermeasures against such attacks have been proposed over the last decades, including static and dynamic approaches. Although such countermeasures have been extensively studied in the literature, previous evaluations have mostly relied on simplified system settings. In this article, we provide a comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of both static and dynamic countermeasures in a realistic setting for Java programs. Our experimental setup considers the effects of the non-deterministic timing behavior introduced by the Java VM, in particular involving just-in-time compilation (JIT). Our empirical results indicate that such countermeasures vary heavily on how much they can reduce information leakage, and show that negative effects of non-deterministic timing behavior on their effectiveness are substantial.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
We provide all implementations and experimental results online: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CHfHD6Huo2Wp2y_ZQb7OgsKeNxiuhxB3/view?usp=sharing.
- 2.
- 3.
The
implementation considered in this article is the same used in [14]. - 4.
We also considered keys with other Hamming weights than 5 and 25, but this is outside the scope of this article.
implementation considered in this article is the same used in [References
Agat, J.: Transforming out timing leaks. In: POPL 2000, pp. 40–53 (2000)
Askarov, A., Zhang, D., Myers, A.C.: Predictive black-box mitigation of timing channels. In: CCS 2010, pp. 297–307 (2010)
Chothia, T., Kawamoto, Y., Novakovic, C.: A tool for estimating information leakage. In: Sharygina, N., Veith, H. (eds.) CAV 2013. LNCS, vol. 8044, pp. 690–695. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39799-8_47
Dantas, Y.G., Gay, R., Hamann, T., Mantel, H., Schickel, J.: An evaluation of bucketing in systems with non-deterministic timing behavior. In: Janczewski, L.J., Kutyłowski, M. (eds.) SEC 2018. IAICT, vol. 529, pp. 323–338. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99828-2_23
Doychev, G., Köpf, B.: Rational protection against timing attacks. In: CSF 2015, pp. 526–536 (2015)
Gay, R., Hu, J., Mantel, H.: CliSeAu: securing distributed java programs by cooperative dynamic enforcement. In: Prakash, A., Shyamasundar, R. (eds.) ICISS 2014. LNCS, vol. 8880, pp. 378–398. Springer, Cham (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13841-1_21
Georges, A., Buytaert, D., Eeckhout, L.: Statistically rigorous java performance evaluation. In: OOPSLA 2007, pp. 57–76 (2007)
İnci, M.S., Gulmezoglu, B., Irazoqui, G., Eisenbarth, T., Sunar, B.: Cache attacks enable bulk key recovery on the cloud. In: Gierlichs, B., Poschmann, A.Y. (eds.) CHES 2016. LNCS, vol. 9813, pp. 368–388. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53140-2_18
Kocher, P.C.: Timing attacks on implementations of Diffie-Hellman, RSA, DSS, and other systems. In: Koblitz, N. (ed.) CRYPTO 1996. LNCS, vol. 1109, pp. 104–113. Springer, Heidelberg (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-68697-5_9
Köpf, B., Dürmuth, M.: A provably secure and efficient countermeasure against timing attacks. In: CSF 2009, pp. 324–335 (2009)
Köpf, B., Mantel, H.: Transformational typing and unification for automatically correcting insecure programs. Int. J. Inf. Secur. 6(2–3), 107–131 (2007)
Köpf, B., Smith, G.: Vulnerability bounds and leakage resilience of blinded cryptography under timing attacks. In: CSF 2010, pp. 44–56. IEEE (2010)
Mantel, H., Schickel, J., Weber, A., Weber, F.: How secure is green IT? The case of software-based energy side channels. In: Lopez, J., Zhou, J., Soriano, M. (eds.) ESORICS 2018. LNCS, vol. 11098, pp. 218–239. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99073-6_11
Mantel, H., Starostin, A.: Transforming out timing leaks, more or less. In: Pernul, G., Ryan, P.Y.A., Weippl, E. (eds.) ESORICS 2015. LNCS, vol. 9326, pp. 447–467. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24174-6_23
Millen, J.K.: Covert channel capacity. In: S&P 1987, pp. 60–66 (1987)
Molnar, D., Piotrowski, M., Schultz, D., Wagner, D.: The program counter security model: automatic detection and removal of control-flow side channel attacks. In: Won, D.H., Kim, S. (eds.) ICISC 2005. LNCS, vol. 3935, pp. 156–168. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/11734727_14
Shannon, C.E.: A mathematical theory of communication. In: ACM SIGMOBILE MC2R 2001, vol. 5 (1), pp. 3–55 (2001)
Smith, D.M., Smith, G.: Tight bounds on information leakage from repeated independent runs. In: CSF 2017, pp. 318–327 (2017)
Zhang, D., Askarov, A., Myers, A.C.: Predictive mitigation of timing channels in interactive systems. In: CCS 2011, pp. 563–574 (2011)
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as well as by the Hessen State Ministry for Higher Education, Research and the Arts (HMWK) within CRISP. This work has been co-funded by the DFG as part of the project Secure Refinement of Cryptographic Algorithms (E3) within the CRC 1119 CROSSING.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Dantas, Y.G., Hamann, T., Mantel, H. (2019). A Comparative Study Across Static and Dynamic Side-Channel Countermeasures. In: Zincir-Heywood, N., Bonfante, G., Debbabi, M., Garcia-Alfaro, J. (eds) Foundations and Practice of Security. FPS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11358. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18419-3_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18419-3_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18418-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18419-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)