Countermeasures against Branch Target Buffer Attacks

Branch Prediction Analysis has been recently proposed as an attack method to extract the key from software implementations of the RSA public key cryptographic algorithm. In this paper, we describe several solutions to protect against such an attack and analyze their impact on the execution time of the cryptographic algorithm. We show that the code transformations required for protection against branch target buffer attacks can be automated and impose only a negligible performance penalty.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: FDTC
• Authors: Giovanni Agosta, Luca Breveglieri, Gerardo Pelosi, Israel Koren
• Keywords: Branch Prediction Analysis, Cryptographic Algorithm, FDTC 2007, Key Cryptographic Algorithm