Exploiting the Physical Disparity: Side-Channel Attacks on Memory Encryption

Thomas Unterluggauer; Stefan Mangard

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-43283-0_1

Exploiting the Physical Disparity: Side-Channel Attacks on Memory Encryption

Thomas Unterluggauer, Stefan Mangard

Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications (7050)

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference paper › peer-review

Abstract

Memory and disk encryption is a common measure to protect sensitive information in memory from adversaries with physical access. However, physical access also comes with the risk of physical attacks. As these may pose a threat to memory confidentiality, this paper investigates contemporary memory and disk encryption schemes and their implementations with respect to Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and Differential Fault Analysis (DFA). It shows that DPA and DFA recover the keys of all the investigated schemes, including the tweakable block ciphers XEX and XTS. This paper also verifies the feasibility of such attacks in practice. Using the EM side channel, a DPA on the disk encryption employed
within the ext4 file system is shown to reveal the used master key on a Zynq Z-7010 system on chip. The results suggest that memory and disk encryption secure against physical attackers is at least four times more expensive.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design - COSADE 2016
Publisher	Springer International Publishing AG
Pages	3-18
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43283-0_1
Publication status	Published - 2016
Event	International Workshop on Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design - Graz, Austria Duration: 14 Apr 2016 → 15 Apr 2016

Publication series

Name	LNCS
Volume	9689

Conference

Conference	International Workshop on Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design
Country/Territory	Austria
City	Graz
Period	14/04/16 → 15/04/16

Keywords

memory encryption
side-channel attacks
DPA
fault analysis
DFA
power analysis
ext4

Fields of Expertise

Information, Communication & Computing

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-319-43283-0_1

cosade_2016Accepted author manuscript, 1.1 MB

https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/473.pdf

MEMSEC - Embedded Memory Security Unit for Automotive Test Systems
Mangard, S.
1/09/14 → 31/08/17
Project: Research project

Cite this

Unterluggauer, T & Mangard, S 2016, Exploiting the Physical Disparity: Side-Channel Attacks on Memory Encryption. in Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design - COSADE 2016. LNCS, vol. 9689, Springer International Publishing AG , pp. 3-18, International Workshop on Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design, Graz, Austria, 14/04/16. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43283-0_1

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title = "Exploiting the Physical Disparity: Side-Channel Attacks on Memory Encryption",

abstract = "Memory and disk encryption is a common measure to protect sensitive information in memory from adversaries with physical access. However, physical access also comes with the risk of physical attacks. As these may pose a threat to memory confidentiality, this paper investigates contemporary memory and disk encryption schemes and their implementations with respect to Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and Differential Fault Analysis (DFA). It shows that DPA and DFA recover the keys of all the investigated schemes, including the tweakable block ciphers XEX and XTS. This paper also verifies the feasibility of such attacks in practice. Using the EM side channel, a DPA on the disk encryption employed within the ext4 file system is shown to reveal the used master key on a Zynq Z-7010 system on chip. The results suggest that memory and disk encryption secure against physical attackers is at least four times more expensive. ",

keywords = "memory encryption, side-channel attacks, DPA, fault analysis, DFA, power analysis, ext4",

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N2 - Memory and disk encryption is a common measure to protect sensitive information in memory from adversaries with physical access. However, physical access also comes with the risk of physical attacks. As these may pose a threat to memory confidentiality, this paper investigates contemporary memory and disk encryption schemes and their implementations with respect to Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and Differential Fault Analysis (DFA). It shows that DPA and DFA recover the keys of all the investigated schemes, including the tweakable block ciphers XEX and XTS. This paper also verifies the feasibility of such attacks in practice. Using the EM side channel, a DPA on the disk encryption employed within the ext4 file system is shown to reveal the used master key on a Zynq Z-7010 system on chip. The results suggest that memory and disk encryption secure against physical attackers is at least four times more expensive.

AB - Memory and disk encryption is a common measure to protect sensitive information in memory from adversaries with physical access. However, physical access also comes with the risk of physical attacks. As these may pose a threat to memory confidentiality, this paper investigates contemporary memory and disk encryption schemes and their implementations with respect to Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and Differential Fault Analysis (DFA). It shows that DPA and DFA recover the keys of all the investigated schemes, including the tweakable block ciphers XEX and XTS. This paper also verifies the feasibility of such attacks in practice. Using the EM side channel, a DPA on the disk encryption employed within the ext4 file system is shown to reveal the used master key on a Zynq Z-7010 system on chip. The results suggest that memory and disk encryption secure against physical attackers is at least four times more expensive.

KW - memory encryption

KW - side-channel attacks

KW - DPA

KW - fault analysis

KW - DFA

KW - power analysis

KW - ext4

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DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-43283-0_1

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BT - Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design - COSADE 2016

PB - Springer International Publishing AG

T2 - International Workshop on Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design

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Exploiting the Physical Disparity: Side-Channel Attacks on Memory Encryption

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Keywords

Fields of Expertise

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Projects

MEMSEC - Embedded Memory Security Unit for Automotive Test Systems

Cite this