AIHWS

The impending threat of large-scale quantum computers to classical RSA and ECC-based public-key cryptographic schemes prompted NIST to initiate a global level standardization process for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). Three out of the four winning schemes are based on hard problems over structured lattices, known as lattice-based cryptographic schemes. This talk will highlight practical Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) vulnerabilities in lattice-based cryptographic cryptography, with particular focus on Kyber. In several cases, the attacker only requires minimal or almost no knowledge of the implementation to mount such practical attacks. Identified vulnerabilities can also target few protected implementations. Finally, we motivate more research towards the development of efficient and secure countermeasures for real-world security of lattice-based schemes.

Security failure in computing systems has become one of today’s biggest concern. The primary threat is the fact that modern computing architectures –from computational optimizations to storage elements and interfaces, from end-user applications to the operating system and hypervisor, and from microarchitecture to underlying hardware– may hide unexpected vulnerabilities. This concern is gaining further momentum, with the spectacular aggressiveness of Spectre, Meltdown, and ZombieLoad vulnerabilities. Even worse, the many undocumented parts of modern architectures open doors for yet undescribed side-channel attacks. This talk discusses the problem of these vulnerabilities at the intersection of software and hardware to envision if Secure-by-Design computing is possible for future hardware architectures, where we strike a balance between security and hard-earned performance benefits. During this talk we will talk about phenomenon of several storage and computation-based attacks, their assessment & mitigations. Toward the end, we will discuss a way forward for raising the bars high enough for attackers to reach Secure-by-Design computing for future architectures.