Cache-Attacks on the ARM TrustZone Implementations of AES-256 and AES-256-GCM via GPU-Based Analysis

Ben Lapid, Avishai Wool

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

The ARM TrustZone is a security extension which is used in recent Samsung flagship smartphones to create a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) called a Secure World, which runs secure processes (Trustlets). The Samsung TEE includes cryptographic key storage and functions inside the Keymaster trustlet. The secret key used by the Keymaster trustlet is derived by a hardware device and is inaccessible to the Android OS. However, the ARM32 AES implementation used by the Keymaster is vulnerable to side channel cache-attacks. The Keymaster trustlet uses AES-256 in GCM mode, which makes mounting a cache attack against this target much harder. In this paper we show that it is possible to perform a successful cache attack against this AES implementation, in AES-256/GCM mode, using widely available hardware. Using a laptop’s GPU to parallelize the analysis, we are able to extract a raw AES-256 key with 7 min of measurements and under a minute of analysis time and an AES-256/GCM key with 40 min of measurements and 30 min of analysis.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSelected Areas in Cryptography – SAC 2018 - 25th International Conference, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsCarlos Cid, Michael J. Jacobson
Pages235-256
Number of pages22
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Event25th International Conference on Selected Areas in Cryptography, SAC 2018 - Calgary, Canada
Duration: 15 Aug 201817 Aug 2018

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11349 LNCS

Conference

Conference25th International Conference on Selected Areas in Cryptography, SAC 2018
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityCalgary
Period15/08/1817/08/18

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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