论文标题

TurboCC:具有Intel Turbo Boost的实用基于频率的秘密通道

TurboCC: A Practical Frequency-Based Covert Channel With Intel Turbo Boost

论文作者

Kalmbach, Manuel, Gottschlag, Mathias, Schmidt, Tim, Bellosa, Frank

论文摘要

秘密渠道是攻击者使用的通信渠道,用于当系统的访问控制策略不允许这样做时,从折衷的系统传输信息。先前的工作表明,CPU频率缩放可以用作秘密通道,以在原本孤立的过程之间传输信息。现代系统要么试图节省电力,要么尝试在其功率限制附近运行以最大程度地提高性能,因此它们实施机制以根据负载来改变频率。基于这种方法的现有秘密渠道要么很容易受到软件对策的挫败,要么仅处理完全闲置的系统。在本文中,我们展示了如何使用Intel Turbo Boost提供的自动频率缩放来构建一个秘密通道,该通道很难预防,而没有明显的性能影响,并且可以忍受明显的背景系统负载。由于Intel Turbo Boost根据活动芯的数量选择了最大CPU频率,因此,我们的Covert通道通过在多个附加的CPU核心上施加负载来调节最大CPU频率的信息。我们的秘密通道原型在空闲系统上达到了高达61位/s的吞吐量,并且在使用25%使用的系统上,最多可达到43位/s。

Covert channels are communication channels used by attackers to transmit information from a compromised system when the access control policy of the system does not allow doing so. Previous work has shown that CPU frequency scaling can be used as a covert channel to transmit information between otherwise isolated processes. Modern systems either try to save power or try to operate near their power limits in order to maximize performance, so they implement mechanisms to vary the frequency based on load. Existing covert channels based on this approach are either easily thwarted by software countermeasures or only work on completely idle systems. In this paper, we show how the automatic frequency scaling provided by Intel Turbo Boost can be used to construct a covert channel that is both hard to prevent without significant performance impact and can tolerate significant background system load. As Intel Turbo Boost selects the maximum CPU frequency based on the number of active cores, our covert channel modulates information onto the maximum CPU frequency by placing load on multiple additional CPU cores. Our prototype of the covert channel achieves a throughput of up to 61 bit/s on an idle system and up to 43 bit/s on a system with 25% utilization.

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