Can code polymorphism limit information leakage?

Antoine Amarilli (1) , Sascha Müller (2) , David Naccache (3, 4) , Daniel Page (5) , Pablo Rauzy (1) , Michael Tunstall (5)

1 ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris
2 TU Darmstadt - Technische Universität Darmstadt - Technical University of Darmstadt
3 CASCADE - Construction and Analysis of Systems for Confidentiality and Authenticity of Data and Entities
4 LIENS - Laboratoire d'informatique de l'école normale supérieure
5 University of Bristol [Bristol]

In addition to its usual complexity assumptions, cryptography silently assumes that information can be physically protected in a single location. As one can easily imagine, real-life devices are not ideal and information may leak through different physical side-channels. It is a known fact that information leakage is a function of both the executed code F and its input x. In this work we explore the use of polymorphic code as a way of resisting side channel attacks. We present experimental results with procedural and functional languages. In each case we rewrite the protected code code Fi before its execution. The outcome is a genealogy of programs F0, F1, . . . such that for all inputs x and for all indexes i ≠ j ⇒ Fi(x) = Fj(x) and Fi ne; Fj . This is shown to increase resistance to side channel attacks.

Mots clés: Program Graph; Source Program; Code Size; Machine Code; Round Function

Domaines: Informatique [cs]; Cryptographie et sécurité [cs.CR]

Antoine Amarilli, Sascha Müller, David Naccache, Daniel Page, Pablo Rauzy, et al.. Can code polymorphism limit information leakage?. 5th Workshop on Information Security Theory and Practices (WISTP), Jun 2011, Heraklion, Crete, Greece. pp.1-21, ⟨10.1007/978-3-642-21040-2_1⟩. ⟨hal-01110259⟩