How secure is green IT? The case of software-based energy side channels

Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2018-09
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Mantel, Heiko 
Schickel, Johannes  
Weber, Alexandra  
Weber, Friedrich  
TORE-URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11420/13824
First published in
Lecture notes in computer science  
Number in series
11098 LNCS
Start Page
218
End Page
239
Citation
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 11098 LNCS: 218-239 (2018)
Contribution to Conference
23rd European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2018  
Publisher DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-99073-6_11
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85052202634
Publisher
Springer International Publishing AG
Software-based energy measurement features in contemporary CPUs allow one to track and to limit energy consumption, e.g., for realizing green IT. The security implications of software-based energy measurement, however, are not well understood. In this article, we study such security implications of green IT. More concretely, we show that side-channel attacks can be established using software-based energy measurement at the example of a popular RSA implementation. Using distinguishing experiments, we identify a side-channel vulnerability that enables attackers to distinguish RSA keys by measuring energy consumption. We demonstrate that a surprisingly low number of sample measurements suffices to succeed in an attack with high probability. In contrast to traditional power side-channel attacks, no physical access to hardware is needed. This makes the vulnerabilities particularly serious.
DDC Class
004: Informatik