CC-Hunter: Uncovering Covert Timing Channels on Shared Processor Hardware

Abstract

As we increasingly rely on computers to process and manage our personal data, safeguarding sensitive information from malicious hackers is a fast growing concern. Among many forms of information leakage, covert timing channels operate by establishing an illegitimate communication channel between two processes and through transmitting information via timing modulation, thereby violating the underlying system's security policy. Recent studies have shown the vulnerability of popular computing environments, such as cloud computing, to these covert timing channels. In this work, we propose a new micro architecture-level framework, CC-Hunter, that detects the possible presence of covert timing channels on shared hardware. Our experiments demonstrate that Chanter is able to successfully detect different types of covert timing channels at varying bandwidths and message patterns.