Using Power-Anomalies to Counter Evasive Micro-Architectural Attacks in Embedded Systems

摘要: High-assurance embedded systems are deployed for decades and expensive to re-certify – hence, each new attack is an unpatchable problem that can only be detected by monitoring out-of-band channels such as the system’s power trace or electromagnetic emissions. Micro-Architectural attacks, example, have recently come prominence since they break all existing software-isolation based security hammering memory rows gain root privileges abusing speculative execution shared hardware leak secret data. This work first use anomalies in detect evasive micro-architectural attacks. To this end, we introduce power-mimicking attacks including DRAM-rowhammer side/covert-channel speculation-driven study their evasiveness. We then quantify operating range of power-anomalies detector using Odroid XU3 board showing rowhammer cannot evade detection while covert channel but forced operate at a 36× 7× lower bandwidth. Our power-anomaly efficient embedded-of-band into (e.g.,) programmable batteries. While rowhammer, side-channel, defenses require invasive code- hardware-changes general-purpose systems, show simple effective defense systems. Power-anomalies help future-proof against vulnerabilities likely emerge like phase-change memories accelerators become mainstream.