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Side-channel vulnerability factor: a metric for measuring information leakage

Authors:

Simha SethumadhavanAuthors Info & Claims

ISCA '12: Proceedings of the 39th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

Pages 106 - 117

Published: 09 June 2012 Publication History

Abstract

There have been many attacks that exploit side-effects of program execution to expose secret information and many proposed countermeasures to protect against these attacks. However there is currently no systematic, holistic methodology for understanding information leakage. As a result, it is not well known how design decisions affect information leakage or the vulnerability of systems to side-channel attacks.

In this paper, we propose a metric for measuring information leakage called the Side-channel Vulnerability Factor (SVF). SVF is based on our observation that all side-channel attacks ranging from physical to microarchitectural to software rely on recognizing leaked execution patterns. SVF quantifies patterns in attackers' observations and measures their correlation to the victim's actual execution patterns and in doing so captures systems' vulnerability to side-channel attacks.

In a detailed case study of on-chip memory systems, SVF measurements help expose unexpected vulnerabilities in whole-system designs and shows how designers can make performance-security trade-offs. Thus, SVF provides a quantitative approach to secure computer architecture.

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Cited By

Tinoco AGao SShi ECalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)ENIGMAPProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620463(4033-4050)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620463
Chattopadhyay SBeck MRezine AZeller A(2019)Quantifying the Information Leakage in Cache Attacks via Symbolic ExecutionACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/328875818:1(1-27)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3288758
Chan TGuo YLin WShi ECzumaj A(2018)Cache-oblivious and data-oblivious sorting and applicationsProceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms10.5555/3174304.3175448(2201-2220)Online publication date: 7-Jan-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3174304.3175448
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Side-channel vulnerability factor: a metric for measuring information leakage
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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ISCA '12: Proceedings of the 39th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

June 2012

584 pages

ISBN:9781450316422

General Chair:
Shih-Lien Lu
Intel
,
Program Chair:
Josep Torrellas
University of Illinois

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 40, Issue 3
ISCA '12
June 2012
559 pages
ISSN:0163-5964
DOI:10.1145/2366231
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IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 09 June 2012

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Research-article

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ISCA '12

Sponsor:

SIGARCH

ISCA '12: The 39th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

June 9 - 13, 2012

Oregon, Portland

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ISCA '12 Paper Acceptance Rate 47 of 262 submissions, 18%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 543 of 3,203 submissions, 17%

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sigarch

The 52nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

June 21 - 25, 2025

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Cited By

Tinoco AGao SShi ECalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)ENIGMAPProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620463(4033-4050)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620463
Chattopadhyay SBeck MRezine AZeller A(2019)Quantifying the Information Leakage in Cache Attacks via Symbolic ExecutionACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/328875818:1(1-27)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3288758
Chan TGuo YLin WShi ECzumaj A(2018)Cache-oblivious and data-oblivious sorting and applicationsProceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms10.5555/3174304.3175448(2201-2220)Online publication date: 7-Jan-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3174304.3175448
Zhang TZhang YLee R(2018)Analyzing Cache Side Channels Using Deep Neural NetworksProceedings of the 34th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference10.1145/3274694.3274715(174-186)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3274694.3274715
Lowe-Power JAkella VFarrens MKing SNitta CSzefer JShi WLee R(2018)Position Paper: A case for exposing extra-architectural state in the ISAProceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Hardware and Architectural Support for Security and Privacy10.1145/3214292.3214300(1-6)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3214292.3214300
Chattopadhyay SBeck MRezine AZeller ATalpin JDerler PSchneider K(2017)Quantifying the information leak in cache attacks via symbolic executionProceedings of the 15th ACM-IEEE International Conference on Formal Methods and Models for System Design10.1145/3127041.3127044(25-35)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3127041.3127044
Li CWang ZHou XChen HLiang XGuo M(2016)Power attack defenseACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News10.1145/3007787.300118944:3(493-505)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3007787.3001189
Li CWang ZHou XChen HLiang XGuo MMin SLoh G(2016)Power attack defenseProceedings of the 43rd International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1109/ISCA.2016.50(493-505)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ISCA.2016.50
Dinh TSaxena PChang EOoi BZhang C(2015)M2RProceedings of the 24th USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/2831143.2831172(447-462)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2831143.2831172
Bacha ATeodorescu RPrvulovic M(2015)AuthenticacheProceedings of the 48th International Symposium on Microarchitecture10.1145/2830772.2830814(128-140)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2830772.2830814
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