Zebrafix: Mitigating Memory-Centric Side-Channel Leakage via Interleaving

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09139v1
• Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2025 10:14:19 GMT
• Title: Zebrafix: Mitigating Memory-Centric Side-Channel Leakage via Interleaving
• Authors: Anna Pätschke, Jan Wichelmann, Thomas Eisenbarth,
• Abstract summary: Some memory-based leakage classes such as ciphertext side-channels, silent stores, and data memory-dependent prefetching remain unaddressed. We define design choices and requirements to leverage interleaving for a generic ciphertext side-channel mitigation. We implement Zebrafix, a compiler-based tool to ensure freshness of memory stores. We discuss to what extent ciphertext side-channel mitigations can be adapted to prevent all three memory-centric side-channel attacks via interleaving.
• Score: 11.900198587370495
• License:
• Abstract: Constant-time code has become the de-facto standard for secure cryptographic implementations. However, some memory-based leakage classes such as ciphertext side-channels, silent stores, and data memory-dependent prefetching remain unaddressed. In the context of ciphertext side-channel mitigations, the practicality of interleaving data with counter values remains to be explored. To close this gap, we define design choices and requirements to leverage interleaving for a generic ciphertext side-channel mitigation. Based on these results, we implement Zebrafix, a compiler-based tool to ensure freshness of memory stores. We evaluate Zebrafix and find that interleaving can perform much better than other ciphertext side-channel mitigations, at the cost of a high practical complexity. We further observe that ciphertext side-channels, silent stores and data memory-dependent prefetching belong to a broader attack category: memory-centric side-channels. Under this unified view, we discuss to what extent ciphertext side-channel mitigations can be adapted to prevent all three memory-centric side-channel attacks via interleaving.

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