3 ms·
Side-channel attacks are some of the most terrifying to me, because fundamentally your code works fine, it's just some detail in the timing that gives away info
by openasocket 8y ago
Side-channel attacks are some of the most terrifying to me, because fundamentally your code works fine, it's just some detail in the timing that gives away information. At least with buffer overflows there are automated ways to try and find them, like fuzz testing. It's not perfect, but at least it's something to try and validate you are doing the right thing. Is there some sort of fuzz testing that could potentially find side-channel timing attacks? Maybe some sort of statistical analysis on the timing results? I found this https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.07005.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.07005.pdf but it seems to be fairly recent, and I don't know how mature this area is.
- Strilanc 8y agoOne of the interesting aspects of quantum computing is that it upgrades these issues into actual bugs. Bit flips are errors in the Z basis, and phase flips (information leaks) are errors in the X basis. [1][2] Trying to build large scale quantum computers could lead to styles of optimization that provably don't have side channel issues. [1]: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3327 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3327 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPw9nkJAwDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPw9nkJAwDY