Description
The growth of embedded systems takes advantage of architectural advances from modern processors to increase performance while maintaining a low power consumption. Among these advances is the introduction of cache memory into embedded systems. These memories speed up the memory accesses by temporarily storing data close to the execution core. Furthermore, data from different applications share the same hardware resources, so the execution of one application affects the others. These interactions between applications give rise to cache-based side-channel attacks. This threat takes advantage of memory accesses to extract secret data executed by cryptographic applications. These attacks are well known on modern processors and have led to countermeasures designed for modern processors. These solutions are either not feasible on embedded systems due to their requirements or result in high additional costs. In this context, we present a countermeasure based on a fine-grained partitioning, so that an application can dynamically lock its data into the cache. Once a data is locked, no application can infer information about the memory accesses made to it. It provides strong security guarantees for critical program sections while introducing a low performance overhead (<4%) through a new hardware/software contract.
Practical infos
Next sessions
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Onysis: A secure European SoC FPGA
Speaker : Adrien GRASSEIN - Nanoxplore
Developed in collaboration with the DGA, the Onysis project introduces a European SoC FPGA designed to embed advanced hardware security features. This presentation will provide an overview of the Onysis architecture, focusing specifically on its native mechanisms to protect critical systems. We will detail the implementation of its integrated security subsystem, covering the secure boot sequence[…]-
SemSecuElec
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Using High Level Profiling Data to Early Assess the Fault Tolerance of Complex Digital Components
Speaker : Luc NOIZETTE - Nuclétudes (filiale Ariane group)
This presentation outlines an innovative methodology for estimating the fault tolerance of complex components based on application profiling obtained using a high-level virtual platform. A derating factor, derived exclusively from profiling metrics (e.g., lifetime in memory and registers), is calibrated using a reliability dataset collected from a set of benchmarks. Applying it to test softwares[…]-
SemSecuElec
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Fault injection
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An Assessment of the Security of Reconfigurable Cloud Computing
Speaker : Russell Tessier - University of Massachusetts
In this talk, we examine efforts to protect network processing and computation in cloud-based FPGAs from hardware- and software-based attacks. FPGAs have served as integral components in cloud computing for a decade, even though commercial FPGA architectures were not designed for cloud deployment. A range of potential attacks on cloud-based FPGAs and their remediations are examined. We[…]-
SemSecuElec
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Securing processor's microarchitecture against SCA in a post-quantum cryptography setting
Speaker : Vincent MIGLIORE - LAAS-CNRS
Hardware microarchitecture is a well-known source of side-channel leakages, providing a notable security reduction of standard cryptographic algorithms (e.g. AES) if not properly addressed by software or hardware. In this talk, we present new design approaches to harden processor's microarchitecture against power-based side-channel attacks, relying on configurable and cascadable building blocks[…]-
SemSecuElec
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Side-channel
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Micro-architectural vulnerabilities
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Compositional Semantics for Detection and Defense of Speculative Leaks
Speaker : Xaver Fabian - CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Speculative execution improves CPU performance but introduces vulnerabilities, known as Spectre attacks, which exploit microarchitectural side effects to leak sensitive data. Modern processors employ multiple interacting speculation mechanisms, yet existing approaches predominantly analyze them in isolation, which limits both the automated detection of complex leaks and the formal verification of[…]-
SemSecuElec
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Side-channel
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Micro-architectural vulnerabilities
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