May 11, 2024

Cybersecurity Breakthrough: New Cipher System Protects Computers Against Spy Programs

To conquer this, Ueno and his colleagues developed SCARF. SCARF is based on a comprehensive mathematical solution and modeling of cache side-channel attacks, offering robust security. Headscarf exhibits impressive efficiency, completing the randomization process with just half the latency of existing cryptographic methods. The ciphers practicality and efficiency were thoroughly verified through rigorous hardware evaluations and system-level simulations.

SCARF is based on a comprehensive mathematical formula and modeling of cache side-channel attacks, offering robust security. Headscarf displays exceptional efficiency, completing the randomization process with just half the latency of existing cryptographic methods.
The group comprised members from Tohoku University, CASA at Ruhr University Bochum, and NTT Social Informatics Laboratories at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation.
A schematic describing how a hacker uses cache side-channel attacks. Credit: Rei Ueno
” We are enjoyed reveal SCARF, a powerful tool in boosting computer system security,” stated Ueno. “Our innovative cipher is engineered to be suitable with different contemporary computer system architectures, guaranteeing its extensive applicability and potential to strengthen computer security significantly.”
Headscarfs prospective impact extends beyond individual computers, as its application has the capability to contribute to constructing a more secure info society. By mitigating cache side-channel attack vulnerabilities, SCARF takes a critical step toward safeguarding delicate information and user privacy.
Reference: “SCARF: A Low-Latency Block Cipher for Secure Cache-Randomization” by Federico Canale, Tim Güneysu, Gregor Leander, Jan Philipp Thoma, Yosuke Todo and Rei Ueno, 2022, USENIX Security Symposium.
The paper detailing the development will exist at the USENIX Security Symposium on August 9, 2023.

A group of international researchers has established SCARF, a brand-new cipher for cache randomization that attends to cache side-channel attacks and offers robust security with exceptional performance. Headscarfs application could substantially strengthen computer system security, and its practicality was verified through extensive evaluations, leading the way for a more safe and secure information society.
A group of researchers from all over the world has actually made considerable progress in the field of computer system security by producing a ingenious and extremely reliable cipher for cache randomization. The ingenious cipher, developed by Assistant Professor Rei Ueno from the Research Institute of Electrical Communication at Tohoku University, addresses the danger of cache side-channel attacks, offering improved security and extraordinary performance.
Modern computer systems are under serious risk from cache side-channel attacks, which can covertly collect delicate information such as secret keys and passwords from unaware targets. Dealing with these attacks is especially hard because they take advantage of flaws in the present working mechanisms of computers, making the development of efficient countermeasures very challenging.
A schematic detailing how the brand-new SCARF system operates. Credit: Rei Ueno
Cache randomization has actually emerged as a promising countermeasure; nevertheless, determining a effective and protected mathematical function for this function has actually been a remaining difficulty.