CAREER: A Quantitative Framework for Analyzing and Mitigating Microarchitectural Side Channels

微体系结构侧信道攻击破坏处理器安全并广泛影响计算机系统，已成为主要的安全威胁之一。这些攻击利用了这样一个事实，即软件在现代处理器上执行时，会在微体系结构上留下痕迹，这些痕迹可能会泄露用户的私人信息。目前针对微架构侧信道攻击的防御旨在减少信息泄漏，但不可避免地引起性能开销，因为它们失去了充分利用计算系统中的性能优化的能力。该项目将开发一个工具集，使生产力之间的安全性和性能的权衡，以减轻微架构的侧通道攻击。该项目处理设计，评估和使用通道混淆技术的基础研究问题。其技术方法是将微体系结构侧信道（一个计算机体系结构安全问题）作为通信问题来构建，并为微体系结构构建定量信道模型。第一个项目重点是构建定量渠道模型，描述和量化复杂硬件事件的影响。第二个推力使用通道模型来测量在混淆架构上运行的应用程序的信息泄漏。第三个目标是探索与现有缓解和检测解决方案共同设计通道混淆技术。该项目将开发一个工具集，以有效地缓解微架构侧通道攻击。该工具集可以使设计、管理和使用计算系统的各种人员受益，包括计算机架构师、系统管理员和软件开发人员。此外，该项目还将在马萨诸塞州技术学院开设硬件安全领域的课程。该项目还将为本科生和代表性不足的少数民族提供研究机会。本项目将在项目结束后至少3年内将所有出版物、代码和数据集存储在马萨诸塞州技术部托管的面向公众的网站上。这些信息将通过商业网站提供。这些网站的链接将反映在http://people.csail.mit.edu/mengjia/projects.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Microarchitectural side-channel attacks that breach processor security and broadly affect computer systems have become one of the major security threats. Those attacks exploit the fact that software, when executing on modern processors, leaves traces on microarchitecture structures, and the traces can reveal private user information. Current defenses against microarchitectural side-channel attacks aim to reduce information leakage but unavoidably incur performance overhead, because they lose the capability of fully exploiting performance optimizations in computing systems. This project will develop a toolset to enable productive trade-offs between security and performance in mitigating microarchitectural side-channel attacks.The project tackles fundamental research problems in designing, evaluating, and using channel obfuscation techniques. The technical approach is to frame microarchitectural side channels, a computer architecture security problem, as a communication problem, and constructs quantitative channel models for microarchitectural structures. The first project thrust constructs the quantitative channel models, characterizing and quantifying the impacts of complex hardware events. The second thrust uses the channel models to measure the information leakage of the applications running on obfuscated architectures. The third thrust explores co-design channel obfuscation techniques with existing mitigation and detection solutions.The project will develop a toolset to mitigate microarchitectural side-channel attacks efficiently. The toolset can benefit a wide range of people who design, manage, and use computing systems, including computer architects, system administrators, and software developers. In addition, this project will initiate an effort on course offerings in the area of hardware security at Massachusetts of Technology. This project will also offer research opportunities to undergraduate students and under-represented minorities. This project will store all publications, code, and data-sets on public-facing websites, hosted at Massachusetts of Technology for at least 3 years after the end of the project. This information will be made available via commercial websites. Links to these websites will be mirrored at http://people.csail.mit.edu/mengjia/projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.