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Side Channel Attacks on RISC-V Processors: Current Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities

Authors:
Mahya Morid Ahmadi
Faiq Khalid
Muhammad Shafique

Keywords: RISC-V, Side-channel, secure ISA, microprocessors, cache, hardware security

Abstract:
Side-channel attacks on microprocessors, like the RISC-V, exhibit security vulnerabilities that lead to several design challenges. Hence, it is imperative to study and analyze these security vulnerabilities comprehensively. In this paper, we present a brief yet comprehensive study of the security vulnerabilities in modern microprocessors with respect to side-channel attacks and their respective mitigation techniques. The focus of this paper is to analyze the hardware-exploitable side-channel attack using power consumption and software-exploitable side-channel attacks to manipulate cache. Towards this, we perform an in-depth analysis of the applicability and practical implications of cache attacks on RISC-V microprocessors and their associated challenges. Finally, based on the comparative study and our analysis, we highlight some key research directions to develop robust RISC-V microprocessors that are resilient to side-channel attacks.

Pages: 18 to 23

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: October 25, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2519-8599

ISBN: 978-1-61208-818-1

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from October 25, 2020 to October 29, 2020