CryptoDB
Zhao Gang
Publications
Year
Venue
Title
2024
RWC
Hertzbleed: Claims of Constant-Time Execution Are Frequently Wrong
Abstract
The recent Hertzbleed disclosure demonstrates how remote-timing analysis can reveal secret information previously only accessible to local-power analysis.
At worst, this constitutes a fundamental break in the constant-time programming principles and the many deployed programs that rely on them.
But all hope is not lost.
Hertzbleed relies on a coarse-grained, noisy channel that is difficult to exploit.
Indeed, the Hertzbleed paper required a bespoke cryptanalysis to attack a specific cryptosystem (SIKE).
Thus, it remains unclear if Hertzbleed represents a threat to the broader security ecosystem.
In this paper, we demonstrate that Hertzbleed's effects affect cryptosystems beyond SIKE.
We demonstrate how latent gadgets in other cryptosystem implementations---specifically ``constant-time'' ECDSA and Classic McEliece---can be combined with existing cryptanalysis to bootstrap Hertzbleed attacks on those cryptosystems.
Coauthors
- Christopher W. Fletcher (1)
- Zhao Gang (1)
- Grant Garrett-Grossman (1)
- David Kohlbrenner (1)
- Riccardo Paccagnella (1)
- Hovav Shacham (1)
- Alan Wandke (1)
- Yingchen Wang (1)