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Thermal Covert Channels on Multi-core Platforms

Authors: 

Ramya Jayaram Masti, Devendra Rai, Aanjhan Ranganathan, Christian Müller, Lothar Thiele, and Srdjan Capkun, ETH Zürich

Abstract: 

Side channels remain a challenge to information flow control and security in modern computing platforms. Resource partitioning techniques that minimise the number of shared resources among processes are often used to address this challenge. In this work, we focus on multicore platforms and we demonstrate that even seemingly strong isolation techniques based on dedicated cores can be circumvented through the use of thermal channels. Specifically, we show that the processor core temperature can be used both as a side channel as well as a covert communication channel even when the system implements strong spatial and temporal partitioning. Our experiments on an Intel Xeon server platform demonstrate covert thermal channels that achieve up to 12.5 bps and weak thermal side channels that can detect processes executed on neighbouring cores. This work therefore shows a limitation in the isolation that can be achieved on existing multi-core systems.

Ramya Jayaram Masti, ETH Zürich

Devendra Rai, ETH Zürich

Aanjhan Ranganathan, ETH Zürich

Christian Müller, ETH Zürich

Lothar Thiele, ETH Zürich

Srdjan Capkun, ETH Zürich

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BibTeX
@inproceedings {190938,
author = {Ramya Jayaram Masti and Devendra Rai and Aanjhan Ranganathan and Christian M{\"u}ller and Lothar Thiele and Srdjan Capkun},
title = {Thermal Covert Channels on Multi-core Platforms},
booktitle = {24th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 15)},
year = {2015},
isbn = {978-1-939133-11-3},
address = {Washington, D.C.},
pages = {865--880},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical-sessions/presentation/masti},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug,
}
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