Power and Frequency Intrinsic Channels on gem5

Abstract

Recent works have highlighted the vulnerability of System-on-a-Chip (SoC) platforms against intrinsic channels attacks. In this threat model, an adversary can leverage vulnerabilities in the SoC’s firmware, the operating system, or the design tools to gain access to shared resources in the platform and transfer data covertly. Given the diversity of attack avenues and the constant evolution of heterogeneous SoCs, it is not practical to study these attacks using conventional approaches. To address this issue, we propose to employ gem5 in the study of power and frequency intrinsic channels. Our work studies heterogeneous SoCs which feature a processor system and an FPGA. We employ the full system simulation of gem5 to emulate a reference physical device. We then describe the emulation of different intrinsic channels which leverage the clock tree and power distribution network of the SoC to transfer data covertly. Our findings demonstrate that gem5 can accurately replicate the logical behavior of power and frequency intrinsic channels.