Presentation
Plug Your Volt: Protecting Intel Processors against Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling based Fault Attacks
DescriptionThis work proposes a new countermeasure principle to defend against Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS) based fault attacks on modern Intel systems. First, we establish that the fundamental cause of DVFS fault attacks is the ability to independently control the frequency and voltage of a processor. Using this observation, we construct a partition of frequency-voltage tuples into unsafe-safe states based on whether a tuple causes timing violations according to switching circuit theoretic principles. Our countermeasure completely prevents DVFS faults on three Intel generation CPUs: Sky Lake, Kaby Lake R, and Comet Lake. Further, it can also be deployed both as microcode or as model-specific registers at the hardware level, unlike previous countermeasures. Finally, we evaluate a minuscule overhead 0.28% of our countermeasure on SPEC2017.
Event Type
Research Manuscript
TimeTuesday, June 252:15pm - 2:30pm PDT
Location3012, 3rd Floor
Security
Hardware Security: Attack and Defense