2017/01/23 by Pablo Cañones, Boris Köpf, Cañones, Pablo +3
Computer Science · #Cloud Data Security Solutions #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques #Security and Verification in Computing #cs.CR
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1701.06481
arxiv created 2017/01/23 · openalex publication_date 2017/01/23 · arxiv updated 2017/01/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Modern computer architectures share physical resources between different programs in order to increase area-, energy-, and cost-efficiency. Unfortunately, sharing often gives rise to side channels that can be exploited for extracting or transmitting sensitive information. We currently lack techniques for systematic reasoning about this interplay between security and efficiency. In particular, there is no established way for quantifying security properties of shared caches. In this paper, we propose a novel model that enables us to characterize important security properties of caches. Our model encompasses two aspects: (1) The amount of information that can be absorbed by a cache, and (2) the amount of information that can effectively be extracted from the cache by an adversary. We use our model to compute both quantities for common cache replacement policies (FIFO, LRU, and PLRU) and to compare their isolation properties. We further show how our model for information extraction leads to an algorithm that can be used to improve the bounds delivered by the CacheAudit static analyzer.