Microarchitectural Attacks and Countermeasures

Abstract

Microarchitectural analysis (MA) is a fast evolving area of side-channel cryptanalysis. This new area focuses on the effects of common processor components and their functionalities on the security of software cryptosystems. The main characteristic of microarchitectural attacks, which sets them aside from classical side-channel attacks, is the simple fact that they exploit the microarchitectural behavior of modern computer systems. The fascinating progress of microprocessor technology in the last decades is maybe the most influential power that has been driving the scientific and technological advances. However, due to strictly throughput, performance, and “performance per watt”-oriented goals of modern processor designs and also “time-to-market”-driven business philosophy, the resulting products, i.e., commodity processor architectures in the market, lack a thorough security analysis. The main element that gave birth to microarchitectural analysis area is indeed this...