Side-channel attacks monitor some aspect of a computer system's behavior to infer the values of secret data. Numerous side-channels have been exploited, including those that monitor caches, the branch predictor, and the memory address bus. This paper presents a method of defending against a broad class of side-channel attacks, which we refer to as digital side-channel attacks. The key idea is to obfuscate the program at the source code level to provide the illusion that many extraneous program paths are executed. This paper describes the technical issues involved in using this idea to provide confidentiality while minimizing execution overhead. We argue about the correctness and security of our compiler transformations and demonstrate that our transformations are safe in the context of a modern processor. Our empirical evaluation shows that our solution is 8.9× faster than prior work (GhostRider [20]) that specifically defends against memory trace-based side-channel attacks.

/pdf/raccoon-closing-digital-side-channels-through-obfuscated-23v9j5sd04.pdf

Raccoon: closing digital side-channels through obfuscated execution

We provide novel coded computation strategies for distributed matrix–matrix products that outperform the recent “Polynomial code” constructions in recovery threshold, i.e., the required number of successful workers. When a fixed $1/m$ fraction of each matrix can be stored at each worker node, Polynomial codes require $m^{2}$ successful workers, while our MatDot codes only require $2m-1$ successful workers. However, MatDot codes have higher computation cost per worker and higher communication cost from each worker to the fusion node. We also provide a systematic construction of MatDot codes. Furthermore, we propose “PolyDot” coding that interpolates between Polynomial codes and MatDot codes to trade off computation/communication costs and recovery thresholds. Finally, we demonstrate a novel coding technique for multiplying $n$ matrices ( $n \geq 3$ ) using ideas from MatDot and PolyDot codes.

On the Optimal Recovery Threshold of Coded Matrix Multiplication

We present BranchScope - a new side-channel attack where the attacker infers the direction of an arbitrary conditional branch instruction in a victim program by manipulating the shared directional branch predictor. The directional component of the branch predictor stores the prediction on a given branch (taken or not-taken) and is a different component from the branch target buffer (BTB) attacked by previous work. BranchScope is the first fine-grained attack on the directional branch predictor, expanding our understanding of the side channel vulnerability of the branch prediction unit. Our attack targets complex hybrid branch predictors with unknown organization. We demonstrate how an attacker can force these predictors to switch to a simple 1-level mode to simplify the direction recovery. We carry out BranchScope on several recent Intel CPUs and also demonstrate the attack against an SGX enclave.

BranchScope: A New Side-Channel Attack on Directional Branch Predictor

Today's massively-sized datasets have made it necessary to often perform computations on them in a distributed manner. In principle, a computational task is divided into subtasks which are distributed over a cluster operated by a taskmaster. One issue faced in practice is the delay incurred due to the presence of slow machines, known as stragglers. Several schemes, including those based on replication, have been proposed in the literature to mitigate the effects of stragglers and more recently, those inspired by coding theory have begun to gain traction. In this work, we consider a distributed gradient descent setting suitable for a wide class of machine learning problems. We adopt the framework of Tandon et al. [1] and present a deterministic scheme that, for a prescribed per-machine computational effort, recovers the gradient from the least number of machines $f$ theoretically permissible, via an $O(f^{2})$ decoding algorithm. The idea is based on a suitably designed Reed-Solomon code that has a sparsest and balanced generator matrix. We also provide a theoretical delay model which can be used to minimize the expected waiting time per computation by optimally choosing the parameters of the scheme. Finally, we supplement our theoretical findings with numerical results that demonstrate the efficacy of the method and its advantages over competing schemes.

/pdf/improving-distributed-gradient-descent-using-reed-solomon-sasbikm0tt.pdf

Improving Distributed Gradient Descent Using Reed-Solomon Codes

Artificial intelligence (AI) has achieved remarkable breakthroughs in a wide range of fields, ranging from speech processing, image classification to drug discovery. This is driven by the explosive growth of data, advances in machine learning (especially deep learning), and the easy access to powerful computing resources. Particularly, the wide scale deployment of edge devices (e.g., IoT devices) generates an unprecedented scale of data, which provides the opportunity to derive accurate models and develop various intelligent applications at the network edge. However, such enormous data cannot all be sent to the cloud for processing, due to the varying channel quality, traffic congestion and/or privacy concerns, and the enormous energy consumption. By pushing inference and training processes of AI models to edge nodes, edge AI has emerged as a promising alternative. AI at the edge requires close cooperation among edge devices , such as smart phones and smart vehicles, and edge servers at the wireless access points and base stations, which however result in heavy communication overheads. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the recent developments in various techniques for overcoming these communication challenges. Specifically, we first identify key communication challenges in edge AI systems. We then introduce communication-efficient techniques, from both algorithmic and system perspectives for training and inference tasks at the network edge. Potential future research directions are also highlighted.

Communication-Efficient Edge AI: Algorithms and Systems

/pdf/gradient-coding-from-cyclic-mds-codes-and-expander-graphs-3p1eol2imk.pdf

Gradient Coding from Cyclic MDS Codes and Expander Graphs

Microarchitectural resources such as caches and predictors can be used to leak information across security domains. Significant prior work has demonstrated attacks and defenses for specific types of such microarchitectural side and covert channels. In this paper, we introduce a general mathematical study of microarchitectural channels using information theory. Our conceptual contribution is a simple mathematical abstraction that captures the common characteristics of all microarchitectural channels. We call this the Bucket model and it reveals that microarchitectural channels are fundamentally different from side and covert channels in networking. We then quantify the communication capacity of several microarchitectural covert channels (including channels that rely on performance counters, AES hardware and memory buses) and measure bandwidths across both KVM based heavy-weight virtualization and light-weight operating-system level isolation. We demonstrate channel capacities that are orders of magnitude higher compared to what was previously considered possible. Finally, we introduce a novel way of detecting intelligent adversaries that try to hide while running covert channel eavesdropping attacks. Our method generalizes a prior detection scheme (that modeled static adversaries) by introducing noise that hides the detection process from an intelligent eavesdropper.

/pdf/understanding-contention-based-channels-and-using-them-for-10ra1s5lc3.pdf

Understanding contention-based channels and using them for defense

We introduce a variant of (sparse) PCA in which the set of feasible support sets is determined by a graph. In particular, we consider the following setting: given a directed acyclic graph G on p vertices corresponding to variables, the non-zero entries of the extracted principal component must coincide with vertices lying along a path in G.

From a statistical perspective, information on the underlying network may potentially reduce the number of observations required to recover the population principal component. We consider the canonical estimator which optimally exploits the prior knowledge by solving a nonconvex quadratic maximization on the empirical covariance. We introduce a simple network and analyze the estimator under the spiked covariance model. We show that side information potentially improves the statistical complexity.

We propose two algorithms to approximate the solution of the constrained quadratic maximization, and recover a component with the desired properties. We empirically evaluate our schemes on synthetic and real datasets.

/pdf/stay-on-path-pca-along-graph-paths-1t4mr52mnr.pdf

Alex Dimakis

Papers

Gradient Coding from Cyclic MDS Codes and Expander Graphs

Understanding contention-based channels and using them for defense

Stay on path: PCA along graph paths