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Formalising the Prevention of Microarchitectural Timing Channels by Operating Systems

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Book cover Formal Methods (FM 2023)

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Abstract

Microarchitectural timing channels are a well-known mechanism for information leakage. Time protection has recently been demonstrated as an operating-system mechanism able to prevent them. However, established theories of information-flow security are insufficient for verifying time protection, which must distinguish between (legal) overt and (illegal) covert flows. We provide a machine-checked formalisation of time protection via a dynamic, observer-relative, intransitive nonleakage property over a careful model of the state elements that cause timing channels. We instantiate and prove our property over a generic model of OS interaction with its users, demonstrating for the first time the feasibility of proving time protection for OS implementations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ensuring that it does not act as a courier requires very sophisticated reasoning about D, e.g. proving that it obeys constant-time programming discipline [1, 6].

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Acknowledgements

We thank our anonymous reviewers, as well as Johannes Åman Pohjola for his feedback on our manuscript. This paper describes research that was co-funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC Project ID DP190103743).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Robert Sison & Toby Murray

  2. UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Robert Sison, Scott Buckley, Gerwin Klein & Gernot Heiser

  3. Proofcraft, Sydney, Australia

    Gerwin Klein

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  1. Robert Sison
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  2. Scott Buckley
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  3. Toby Murray
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  4. Gerwin Klein
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  5. Gernot Heiser
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert Sison .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Marsha Chechik

  2. RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Joost-Pieter Katoen

  3. University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany

    Martin Leucker

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Sison, R., Buckley, S., Murray, T., Klein, G., Heiser, G. (2023). Formalising the Prevention of Microarchitectural Timing Channels by Operating Systems. In: Chechik, M., Katoen, JP., Leucker, M. (eds) Formal Methods. FM 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14000. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27481-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27481-7_8

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