Secure Cryptography Integration: NoC-Based Microarchitectural Attacks and Countermeasures

NoC-based MPSoCs are a key enabling technology for the Internet-of-Things (IoT), a hyper-connected and multi-tenant world where resources are shared and communication is ubiquitous. Security in such environments is a major requirement. In order to cope with the security needs and provide confidentiality and authentication services, MPSoCs usually integrate cryptographic functionalities deployed as software and/or hardware solutions. However, the shared nature of the MPSoC computation, storage, and communication resources can be exploited to perform implementation attacks, threatening the system security. During the execution of a cryptographic operation, the secret key may passively be revealed through so-called side-channels. While classical side-channels based on measurement of power consumption, timing and electromagnetic emanation have been studied, the communication-based microarchitectural attacks have been let aside. The communication attacks are not as well-understood as other microarchitectural attacks. These attacks are able to extract sensitive information or to detect the vulnerable points during the cryptographic operation based on the observed communication. In this chapter, the communication-based microarchitectural attacks, challenges, and opportunities are discussed. To this end, this chapter presents three contributions. First, it provides a wide and detailed description of the microarchitectural NoC-based attacks. Second, it contains the compilation of the state of the art in this area. Third, it presents the applicability of the NoC-based attacks on current and future cryptographic primitives. The discussion shows that the NoC-based attacks are a real threat, being able to perform a full recovery of sensitive information.