Unveiling hardware-based data prefetcher, a hidden source of information leakage

Youngjoo Shin, Hyung Chan Kim, Dokeun Kwon, Ji Hoon Jeong, Junbeom Hur

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

    49 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Data prefetching is a hardware-based optimization mechanism used in most of the modern microprocessors. It fetches data to the cache before it is needed. In this paper, we present a novel microarchitectural attack that exploits the prefetching mechanism. Our attack targets Instruction pointer (IP)-based stride prefetching in Intel processors. Stride prefetcher detects memory access patterns with a regular stride, which are likely to be found in lookup table-based cryptographic implementations. By monitoring the prefetching activities near the lookup table, attackers can extract sensitive information such as secret keys from victim applications. This kind of leakage from prefetching has never been considered in the design of constant time algorithm to prevent side-channel attacks. We show the potential of the proposed attack by applying it against the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) algorithm built upon the latest version of OpenSSL library. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first microarchitectural side-channel attack exploiting the hardware prefetching of modern microprocessors.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationCCS 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security
    PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
    Pages131-145
    Number of pages15
    ISBN (Electronic)9781450356930
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018 Oct 15
    Event25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018 - Toronto, Canada
    Duration: 2018 Oct 15 → …

    Publication series

    NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
    ISSN (Print)1543-7221

    Conference

    Conference25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018
    Country/TerritoryCanada
    CityToronto
    Period18/10/15 → …

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.

    Keywords

    • ECDH algorithm
    • Hardware prefetching
    • Microarchitectural side-channel attacks
    • OpenSSL

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Software
    • Computer Networks and Communications

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