DRAM Power and Thermal Modeling for Embedded System Security Against DRAM Side-Channel Attacks
Hokeun Kim, Armin Wasicek, Edward A. Lee

Citation
Hokeun Kim, Armin Wasicek, Edward A. Lee. "DRAM Power and Thermal Modeling for Embedded System Security Against DRAM Side-Channel Attacks". Talk or presentation, 16, September, 2014; Poster presented at the TerraSwarm 2014 Security and Privacy Workshop, Rochester, NY.

Abstract
Side-channel attacks target primarily the physical implementation of a computer system. Unlike traditional computer systems, embedded systems are particularly vulnerable to this class of attacks, because they often operate in untrusted environments and due to their accessibility. An example of a side channel attack is a cold boot attack on DRAM memories. In a cold boot attack, an attacker aims to obtain a memory dump after a cold restart in order to read out sensitive information like cryptographic keys. Ptolemy II is a powerful framework, where multiple models of computation can be explored for actor-based design of embedded systems. Since computation relies on a large extent of the computer architecture that is used for execution, the Ptolemy II framework can significantly benefit from the integration of architecture models. In this poster, we propose a tool integration approach of the gem5 computer architecture simulator and Ptolemy II. The gem5 simulator generates information such as execution time and memory access for a specific computer architecture. We use this information to build a more fine-grained system model in Ptolemy II. We demonstrate the integration of both tools by modeling power and the temperature of a DRAM in a computer architecture as preliminary steps to model DRAM side-channel attacks and possible countermeasures.

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  • HTML
    Hokeun Kim, Armin Wasicek, Edward A. Lee. <a
    href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/372.html"><i>DRAM
    Power and Thermal Modeling for Embedded System Security
    Against DRAM Side-Channel Attacks</i></a>, Talk
    or presentation,  16, September, 2014; Poster presented at
    the <a
    href="http://www.terraswarm.org/conferences/14/security/index.htm"
    >TerraSwarm 2014 Security and Privacy Workshop</a>,
    Rochester, NY.
  • Plain text
    Hokeun Kim, Armin Wasicek, Edward A. Lee. "DRAM Power
    and Thermal Modeling for Embedded System Security Against
    DRAM Side-Channel Attacks". Talk or presentation,  16,
    September, 2014; Poster presented at the <a
    href="http://www.terraswarm.org/conferences/14/security/index.htm"
    >TerraSwarm 2014 Security and Privacy Workshop</a>,
    Rochester, NY.
  • BibTeX
    @presentation{KimWasicekLee14_DRAMPowerThermalModelingForEmbeddedSystemSecurityAgainst,
        author = {Hokeun Kim and Armin Wasicek and Edward A. Lee},
        title = {DRAM Power and Thermal Modeling for Embedded
                  System Security Against DRAM Side-Channel Attacks},
        day = {16},
        month = {September},
        year = {2014},
        note = {Poster presented at the <a
                  href="http://www.terraswarm.org/conferences/14/security/index.htm"
                  >TerraSwarm 2014 Security and Privacy
                  Workshop</a>, Rochester, NY.},
        abstract = {Side-channel attacks target primarily the physical
                  implementation of a computer system. Unlike
                  traditional computer systems, embedded systems are
                  particularly vulnerable to this class of attacks,
                  because they often operate in untrusted
                  environments and due to their accessibility. An
                  example of a side channel attack is a cold boot
                  attack on DRAM memories. In a cold boot attack, an
                  attacker aims to obtain a memory dump after a cold
                  restart in order to read out sensitive information
                  like cryptographic keys. Ptolemy II is a powerful
                  framework, where multiple models of computation
                  can be explored for actor-based design of embedded
                  systems. Since computation relies on a large
                  extent of the computer architecture that is used
                  for execution, the Ptolemy II framework can
                  significantly benefit from the integration of
                  architecture models. In this poster, we propose a
                  tool integration approach of the gem5 computer
                  architecture simulator and Ptolemy II. The gem5
                  simulator generates information such as execution
                  time and memory access for a specific computer
                  architecture. We use this information to build a
                  more fine-grained system model in Ptolemy II. We
                  demonstrate the integration of both tools by
                  modeling power and the temperature of a DRAM in a
                  computer architecture as preliminary steps to
                  model DRAM side-channel attacks and possible
                  countermeasures.},
        URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/372.html}
    }
    

Posted by Hokeun Kim on 18 Sep 2014.

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