Clockwork: Tracking Remote Timing Attacks

Bastys, Iulia,1986Chalmers tekniska högskola,Chalmers University of Technology (author)

QC 20210323
Timing leaks have been a major concern for the security community. A common approach is to prevent secrets from affecting the execution time, thus achieving security with respect to a strong, local attacker who can measure the timing of program runs. However, this approach becomes restrictive as soon as programs branch on a secret. This paper focuses on timing leaks under remote execution. A key difference is that the remote attacker does not have a reference point of when a program run has started or finished, which significantly restricts attacker capabilities. We propose an extensional security characterization that captures the essence of remote timing attacks. We identify patterns of combining clock access, secret branching, and output in a way that leads to timing leaks. Based on these patterns, we design Clockwork, a monitor that rules out remote timing leaks. We implement the approach for JavaScript, leveraging JSFlow, a state-of-the-art information flow tracker. We demonstrate the feasibility of the approach on case studies with IFTTT, a popular IoT app platform, and VJSC, an advanced JavaScript library for e-voting.

Balliu, Musard,1985KTH,Teoretisk datalogi, TCS,Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH),Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)(Swepub:kth)u1j8w3cj (author)
Rezk, Tamara,1978Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA),INRIA Sophia-Antipolis(Swepub:cth)tamara (author)
Sabelfeld, Andrei,1974Chalmers tekniska högskola,Chalmers University of Technology(Swepub:cth)andrei (author)
Chalmers tekniska högskolaChalmers University of Technology (creator_code:org_t)

In:Proceedings - IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium: IEEE2020-June, s. 350-3651940-1434
In:Proceedings IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium, CSF 2020: IEEE2020-June, s. 350-365

By the author/editor: Bastys, Iulia, 1 ...; Balliu, Musard, ...; Rezk, Tamara, 19 ...; Sabelfeld, Andre ...

About the subject

NATURAL SCIENCES: NATURAL SCIENCES; and Computer and Inf ...; and Computer Enginee ...

NATURAL SCIENCES: NATURAL SCIENCES; and Computer and Inf ...; and Computer Science ...

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY: ENGINEERING AND ...; and Electrical Engin ...; and Computer Systems

By the university: Chalmers University of Technology; Royal Institute of Technology

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