Title
Closing internal timing channels by transformation
Abstract
Abstract. A major difficulty for tracking information flow in multithreaded programs is due to the internal timing covert channel. Information is leaked via this channel when secrets affect the timing behavior of a thread, which, via the scheduler, affects the interleaving of assignments to public variables. This channel is particularly dangerous because, in contrast to external timing, the attacker does not need to observe the actual execution time. This paper presents a compositional transformation that closes the internal timing channel for multithreaded programs (or rejects the program if there are symptoms of other flows). The transformation is based on spawning dedicated threads, whenever computation may affect secrets, and carefully synchronizing them. The target language features semaphores, which have not been previously considered in the context of termination-insensitive security.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1007/978-3-540-77505-8_10
ASIAN
Keywords
Field
DocType
compositional transformation,timing behavior,internal timing,external timing,multithreaded program,dedicated thread,actual execution time,internal timing channel,covert channel,information flow
Information flow (information theory),Semaphore,Computer science,Covert channel,Synchronizing,Computer network,Communication channel,Real-time computing,Thread (computing),Interleaving,Computation
Conference
Volume
ISSN
ISBN
4435
0302-9743
3-540-77504-8
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
19
0.76
23
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Alejandro Russo174635.22
John Hughes2190.76
David Naumann3110184.12
Andrei Sabelfeld42692121.16