Is protecting against Meltdown and Spectre on virtual servers actually possible?

I’ve been reading into the Meltdown and Spectre bugs recently and the issues they cause for virtualised servers, as memory in one VM can potentially be accessed by another user in a separate VM with the same host.
I found this article on D… Continue reading Is protecting against Meltdown and Spectre on virtual servers actually possible?

How sensitive are acoustic side-channels to compression with a narrowband codec?

Assume sensitive audio emissions from a mechanical keyboard. These audio emissions are often sufficient to reconstruct the actual key presses that generated the sound. If the audio is compressed using a narrowband audio codec such as G.711… Continue reading How sensitive are acoustic side-channels to compression with a narrowband codec?

In the time side channel, is there any way to improve the measurement time accuracy?

I want to measure the execution time of a function. The execution time of this function is only slightly different in the two cases. Is there any way I can accurately measure its time to distinguish the two cases?
The possible solutions ar… Continue reading In the time side channel, is there any way to improve the measurement time accuracy?

Compiler-induced information leaks/side-channels in cryptography implementations

In Cryptography Engineering Ferguson, Schneier and Kohno put a big emphasis on quality of code in order to prevent it from leaking information and from being vulnerable to memory corruption exploits.
Re-implementing cryptography, especiall… Continue reading Compiler-induced information leaks/side-channels in cryptography implementations

FLUSH + RELOAD Proof of Concept – Why do we need to flush more than needed?

Problem
I am putting together a proof of concept for the FLUSH + RELOAD attack. The method is outlined in great detail in this paper. The general idea is simple – cached addresses can be accessed with much greater speed than addresses not … Continue reading FLUSH + RELOAD Proof of Concept – Why do we need to flush more than needed?