Daniel Genkin

*Please note: this CyLab seminar is open only to partners and Carnegie Mellon University faculty, students, and staff.

Speaker:
Daniel Genkin
Alan and Anne Taetle Early Career Associate Professor
School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, Georgia Tech University

Talk Title:
Side Channel Attacks: Lesson Learned or Troubles Ahead?

Abstract:
The security and architecture communities will remember the past few years as the era of side channels. Starting from Spectre and Meltdown, time and again we have seen how basic performance-improving features can be exploited to violate fundamental security guarantees. Making things worse the rise of side channels points to a larger problem, namely the presence of large gaps in the hardware-software security abstraction, in part due to the lack of commodity hardware analysis tooling allowing for deep system inspection.

In this talk, I will discuss techniques for DRAM bus interposition, and how such hardware can be built cheaply and easily using readily available equipment. I will then show how DDR analysis tools can be used for understanding security gaps in computing platforms, enabling for the first time software-only Rowhammer attacks on server hardware equipped with ECC memory. Finally, I will discuss security implications for Trusted Execution Environments, showing severe issues with memory encryption techniques on server hardware.

Bio:
Daniel Genkin is an Associate Professor at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at Georgia Tech. Daniel’s research interests are in hardware and system security, with particular focus on side channel attacks and defenses. Daniel’s work has been recognized by best paper awards in multiple academic and industry venues, as well as covered by national and scientific press. Daniel has been part of the team performing the first analysis of speculative and transient execution, resulting in the discovery of Spectre, Meltdown and follow ups. Finally, he has a PhD in Computer Science from the Technion Israel’s Institute of Technology and is a 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow.

Upcoming Events