SEA Cache: A Performance-Efficient Countermeasure for Contention-based Attacks

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Xiao, Zwolinski, Mark, Halak, Basel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909213349904384
author Liu, Xiao
Zwolinski, Mark
Halak, Basel
author_facet Liu, Xiao
Zwolinski, Mark
Halak, Basel
contents Many cache designs have been proposed to guard against contention-based side-channel attacks. One well-known type of cache is the randomized remapping cache. Many randomized remapping caches provide fixed or over protection, which leads to permanent performance degradation, or they provide flexible protection, but sacrifice performance against strong contention-based attacks. To improve the secure cache design, we extend an existing secure cache design, CEASER-SH cache, and propose the SEA cache. The novel cache configurations in both caches are logical associativity, which allows the cache line to be placed not only in its mapped cache set but also in the subsequent cache sets. SEA cache allows each user or each process to have a different local logical associativity. Hence, only those users or processes that request extra protection against contention-based attacks are protected with high logical associativity. Other users or processes can access the cache with lower latency and higher performance. Compared to a CEASER-SH cache with logical associativity of 8, an SEA cache with logical associativity of 1 for normal protection users and 16 for high protection users has a Cycles Per Instruction penalty that is about 0.6% less for users under normal protections and provides better security against contention-based attacks. Based on a 45nm technology library, and compared to a conventional cache, we estimate the power overhead is about 20% and the area overhead is 3.4%.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_20027
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SEA Cache: A Performance-Efficient Countermeasure for Contention-based Attacks
Liu, Xiao
Zwolinski, Mark
Halak, Basel
Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
Many cache designs have been proposed to guard against contention-based side-channel attacks. One well-known type of cache is the randomized remapping cache. Many randomized remapping caches provide fixed or over protection, which leads to permanent performance degradation, or they provide flexible protection, but sacrifice performance against strong contention-based attacks. To improve the secure cache design, we extend an existing secure cache design, CEASER-SH cache, and propose the SEA cache. The novel cache configurations in both caches are logical associativity, which allows the cache line to be placed not only in its mapped cache set but also in the subsequent cache sets. SEA cache allows each user or each process to have a different local logical associativity. Hence, only those users or processes that request extra protection against contention-based attacks are protected with high logical associativity. Other users or processes can access the cache with lower latency and higher performance. Compared to a CEASER-SH cache with logical associativity of 8, an SEA cache with logical associativity of 1 for normal protection users and 16 for high protection users has a Cycles Per Instruction penalty that is about 0.6% less for users under normal protections and provides better security against contention-based attacks. Based on a 45nm technology library, and compared to a conventional cache, we estimate the power overhead is about 20% and the area overhead is 3.4%.
title SEA Cache: A Performance-Efficient Countermeasure for Contention-based Attacks
topic Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.20027