Ruhr-Uni-Bochum

CASA Distinguished Lecture with Antoon Purnal (PQShield) on October 24, 2023

The topic is: "Cache Side-Channel Attacks on Existing and Emerging Computing Platforms"

Copyright: Antoon Purnal

We cordially invite you to the next CASA Distinguished Lecture Online on Tuesday, October 24.

When: 24.10.2023, 2 PM
Where: Building TZR ("MB"), Level 1, Room S-MO-104, Universitätsstraße 142, 44799 Bochum
Online-Participation: Zoom-Webinar

Topic: Cache Side-Channel Attacks on Existing and Emerging Computing Platforms

Abstract: Microarchitectural side-channel attacks leverage interference in shared hardware components to extract potentially sensitive data. Arguably the most important class of microarchitectural side-channel attacks are cache attacks, which target the shared cache hierarchy.

This talk covers our recent advances in cache security research. We explore why cache attacks have higher precision than you think, why heterogeneous computing may inadvertently introduce Cache-Attacks-as-a-Service (CAaaS), why existing countermeasures leave a lot to be desired, and why perfect security would require the UNIX epoch to be deprecated.

With a live demo, we will show how humans can rely only on their senses to perform cache attacks. Come and see it with your own eyes

Biography: Antoon (Toon) Purnal is a Cryptography Security Analyst at PQShield. Before joining PQShield, he obtained a PhD in Electrical Engineering from COSIC, KU Leuven. His PhD research on microarchitectural attacks and defences was awarded a personal grant from the Research Foundation Flanders - FWO. Toon regularly publishes at flagship security conferences, such as IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, and ACM CCS. His research interests include microarchitectural attacks and defences, as well as efficient and secure cryptographic implementations in the post-quantum era.

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