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This is not a great headline. Side-channel attacks are possible on nearly any cryptographic or security-sensitive procedure. The paper doesn’t show some kind of
by blintz 5y ago
This is not a great headline. Side-channel attacks are possible on nearly any cryptographic or security-sensitive procedure. The paper doesn’t show some kind of general vulnerability of homomorphic encryption (or lattice-based encryption), just a specific issue with a specific library. A more accurate headline would be “Exploitable side-channel leakage vulnerability in SEAL up to version 3.6”. The cool contribution of the paper is that it does show how to leverage BKZ for this particular kind of leakage (which, over time, will probably occur eventually in other implementations of lattice-based cryptography).
- not2b 5y agoI agree that this is an issue with this specific library. But well-designed cryptography code is written to be resistant to timing or power side channel attacks.
- rocqua 5y agoGenerally speaking, highly qualified and deeply developed encryption libraries will have much more resistance to side-channel attacks. This resistance is something that is added to an implementation over time. The fact that a library implementing a cutting edge method has not matured this much yet is not really a surprise. Moreover, the fun parts of homomorphic encryption involve sending it to someone else who can process it. That someone else is probably not going to be able to measure your power draw. Though timing attacks can still be a worry.