Side Channel Attack Example
Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, discovered in 2018 is an example for side channel attack. These attacks exploit security weaknesses in modern processors to access sensitive data from the memory of other programs and the operating system.
By analyzing the time it takes to execute certain instructions and access memory, attackers can infer the data and extract information like passwords or encryption keys from the affected computer. Meltdown and Spectre showed how even hardware-level features designed to improve performance could become potential avenues for side-channel attack.
What is a Side-Channel Attack? How it Works
Side-Channel Attack: A side-channel attack is a type of cybersecurity threat where the attacker gains information from the physical implementation of a computer system, rather than exploiting software vulnerabilities. This is done by analyzing indirect information, such as power consumption, electromagnetic leaks, or even sound, to uncover sensitive data like cryptographic keys or personal information.
Also, many side-channel analysis techniques have proven successful in breaking an algorithmically robust cryptographic operation and extracting the secret key.
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