Ort: Raum S2-02 /  E302
Datum und Zeit: Dienstag, 11. November 2008, 16:25-18:00 Uhr

Boris Köpf, Max Planck Institut für Software Systeme

Automatically deriving information-theoretic bounds for side-channel attacks

Side-channel attacks have become so effective that they pose a real
threat to the security of cryptographic algorithms. This threat is not
covered by traditional notions of cryptographic security. In this talk,
I will present work on an alternative model for reasoning about the
resistance to such attacks.  The model leads to bounds for the
information that can be extracted from a system in a side-channel
attack. I will show how these bounds can be computed and be used for
analyzing hardware implementations for their resistance to timing
attacks.  A comparison of unprotected implementations to implementations
with countermeasures applied enables the first formal evaluation of 
message-blinding, the state-of-the-art countermeasure against timing
attacks.  I will conclude with an outlook on how
automated reasoning techniques such as model checking can be used for
scaling-up the analysis to larger systems.