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.
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.
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.
