Faculty
EuroSys Roger Needham PhD Award (2020)
NSA Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition Honorable Mention: Meltdown (2019)
Open Exploit Award: Meltdown and Spectre (2019)
S&P Distinguished Paper Award - Spectre (2019)
CSAW Best Paper Award - Meltdown (2018)
Pwnie Award for Best Privilege Escalation Bug - Meltdown (2018)
Pwnie Awardfor Most Innovative Research - Spectre (2018)
I am Faculty at the Helmholtz Center for Information Security (CISPA) in
Saarbrücken, Germany, with a focus on microarchitectural side-channel
attacks and system security. I obtained my PhD with the title
"Software-based Side-Channel Attacks and Defenses in Restricted
Environments" in 2019 from Graz University of Technology (advised by
Daniel Gruss). I hold two master's degrees, one in computer science and
one in software engineering with a strong focus on security. I am a
regular speaker at both academic and hacker conferences (7 times Black
Hat, CCC, Blue Hat, etc.). I was part of one of the research teams that
found the Meltdown, Spectre, Fallout, and LVI vulnerabilities, as well
as the ZombieLoad vulnerability. I was also part of the KAISER patch,
the basis for Meltdown countermeasures now deployed in every modern
operating system under names such as KPTI or KVA Shadow.
USENIX-Security
USENIX Security Symposium31st USENIX Security Symposium
USENIX-Security
USENIX Security Symposium31st USENIX Security Symposium
USENIX-Security
USENIX Security Symposium31st USENIX Security Symposium
CCSW
ACM Cloud Computing Security WorkshopCCSW
USENIX-Security
30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '21)30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '21)
SP
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)2021 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)
FC
Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2021Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2021
FC
Financial Cryptography and Data SecurityFinancial Cryptography and Data Security 2021
Side-Channel Attacks and Defenses
In this lecture, you will learn about side channels in software and hardware, their security implications, how they can be exploited from software, and ways to prevent data leakage. Since 2018, side channels received a lot of attention as they are a vital part of Meltdown and Spectre attacks. Meltdown and Spectre showed that the security boundaries of modern CPUs can be circumvented with the help of side channels. However, besides these publicly known attacks, there are many more attacks relying on side channels. In particular, this lecture provides an overview of attack techniques and countermeasures for
This course provides hands-on experience with various exercises, in which attacks and defenses have to be implemented and evaluated.
There are no formal prerequisites for this course. However, if you want to participate, you should
The lecture will take place in-presence every Tuesday from 10.00 (c.t.) - 12.00, starting 19.10.2021. Location: E9 1 (CISPA), room 0.05 (lecture hall ground floor). A stream is also provided via YouTube (links in the Material section).
There is a total of 100 points for this course. There are up to 50 points for the practical assignments and 50 points for the final exam. Additionally, there are optional lecture challenges that give you bonus points if you solve them.
Note that you need a minimum of 26 points in the practical assignments and a minimum of 26 points in the exam to pass this course. Bonus points can only be used to get a better grade if you already passed the course, i.e., if you have at least 52 points without the bonus points.
There are three practical assignments with a total of 50 points. You need at least 26 points in total to pass the course. The practical assignments cover the topics covered in the lecture and aim to deepen your knowledge of the topics.
You can discuss the assignments with other students, but you should not collaborate on the solution with anyone. Your solution should be original and not be an existing solution (e.g., from someone else, or from the internet). All submissions will be automatically checked for plagiarism. Plagiarism automatically results in zero points.
Exams are done in writing. The final exam will take place on TBD. Note that physical presence is required for the exam.
Exams consist of both theoretical questions and practical questions. Theoretic questions are basically the theoretic parts of the slides and possibly additional content presented in the lecture, which is not part of the slides. Practical questions are, in principle, similar to the tasks given in the lecture challenges as well as in the practicals. However, the complexity of the questions is scaled to make them adequate for the time available during an exam.
All questions of the exam are in English. Answers can be given either in English or in German, at the student’s discretion.
No lecture notes or any other materials are allowed during an exam. All materials required to solve the practical questions are provided at the exam.
During the lecture, there will be small “Lecture Challenges” that you can optionally solve as a bonus. These challenges are optional, but solving them results in bonus points. The aim of the challenges is to dig deeper into a certain topic of the respective lecture. Thus, it is advisable to try to complete the challenge soon after the lecture.