Hire an Illini
Neil Zhao
- Advisor:
- Josep Torrellas
- Departments:
- Areas of Expertise:
- Cloud Computing
- System Security
- Computer Architecture
- Thesis Title:
- You Share, You Leak, Practical Side-Channel Attacks and Defenses in Modern Clouds
- Thesis abstract:
- Over the past decades, the pursuit of improving computation density and resource sharing has substantially enhanced the performance and efficiency of modern computer systems. However, this shift has also introduced serious security concerns, notably side-channel attacks. Public cloud computing, with its ever-growing market size and extensive hardware resource sharing among mutually-distrusting tenants, stands out as a prime target for these attacks. Recognizing this, my thesis delves deeply into both the vulnerabilities and defenses in public cloud environments. On the attack front, my thesis examines the intricacies of conducting end-to-end side-channel attacks in modern public clouds. It introduces efficient methods to increase the likelihood of an attacker co-locating with a targeted victim, filling a critical gap for side-channel attacks in public clouds. Additionally, the thesis presents novel techniques for setting up and monitoring cache-based side channels in the inherently noisy public cloud environment, culminating in a demonstration of a cross-tenant attack on vulnerable cryptographic code in Google Cloud. On the defense front, this thesis introduces Untangle, a framework to quantify information leakage in dynamic resource partitioning schemes, which are promising side-channel defenses. Employing Untangle, the thesis proposes design principles and defense mechanisms to tightly bound and reduce the leakage, resulting in low-leakage high-performance dynamic partitioning schemes. Finally, my thesis also explores new side channels in modern Intel processors and develops defenses for speculative execution attacks.
- Downloads:
Contact information:
ziruiz6@illinois.edu