ShuffleV: A Microarchitectural Defense Strategy against Electromagnetic Side-Channel Attacks in Microprocessors

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Narkthong, Nuntipat, Luo, Yukui, Xu, Xiaolin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Narkthong, Nuntipat
Luo, Yukui
Xu, Xiaolin
author_facet Narkthong, Nuntipat
Luo, Yukui
Xu, Xiaolin
contents The run-time electromagnetic (EM) emanation of microprocessors presents a side-channel that leaks the confidentiality of the applications running on them. Many recent works have demonstrated successful attacks leveraging such side-channels to extract the confidentiality of diverse applications, such as the key of cryptographic algorithms and the hyperparameter of neural network models. This paper proposes ShuffleV, a microarchitecture defense strategy against EM Side-Channel Attacks (SCAs). ShuffleV adopts the moving target defense (MTD) philosophy, by integrating hardware units to randomly shuffle the execution order of program instructions and optionally insert dummy instructions, to nullify the statistical observation by attackers across repetitive runs. We build ShuffleV on the open-source RISC-V core and provide six design options, to suit different application scenarios. To enable rapid evaluation, we develop a ShuffleV simulator that can help users to (1) simulate the performance overhead for each design option and (2) generate an execution trace to validate the randomness of execution on their workload. We implement ShuffleV on a Xilinx PYNQ-Z2 FPGA and validate its performance with two representative victim applications against EM SCAs, AES encryption, and neural network inference. The experimental results demonstrate that ShuffleV can provide automatic protection for these applications, without any user intervention or software modification.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_13111
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ShuffleV: A Microarchitectural Defense Strategy against Electromagnetic Side-Channel Attacks in Microprocessors
Narkthong, Nuntipat
Luo, Yukui
Xu, Xiaolin
Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
The run-time electromagnetic (EM) emanation of microprocessors presents a side-channel that leaks the confidentiality of the applications running on them. Many recent works have demonstrated successful attacks leveraging such side-channels to extract the confidentiality of diverse applications, such as the key of cryptographic algorithms and the hyperparameter of neural network models. This paper proposes ShuffleV, a microarchitecture defense strategy against EM Side-Channel Attacks (SCAs). ShuffleV adopts the moving target defense (MTD) philosophy, by integrating hardware units to randomly shuffle the execution order of program instructions and optionally insert dummy instructions, to nullify the statistical observation by attackers across repetitive runs. We build ShuffleV on the open-source RISC-V core and provide six design options, to suit different application scenarios. To enable rapid evaluation, we develop a ShuffleV simulator that can help users to (1) simulate the performance overhead for each design option and (2) generate an execution trace to validate the randomness of execution on their workload. We implement ShuffleV on a Xilinx PYNQ-Z2 FPGA and validate its performance with two representative victim applications against EM SCAs, AES encryption, and neural network inference. The experimental results demonstrate that ShuffleV can provide automatic protection for these applications, without any user intervention or software modification.
title ShuffleV: A Microarchitectural Defense Strategy against Electromagnetic Side-Channel Attacks in Microprocessors
topic Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13111