일자: 2026년 4월 29일 (수) 10:30

장소: 화학관 330102호

연사: Nisa Bostancı (ETH Zurich)

제목: Emerging Covert Channels and Side Channels in RowHammer Defenses and Processing-in-Memory Architectures

요약: Memory is a central component of modern computing systems, continuously evolving to address robustness challenges and to overcome performance and energy limitations. In this talk, we investigate the timing side-channel and covert-channel vulnerabilities in current and future DRAM-based systems that emerge with the adoption of read-disturbance defenses and with the paradigm shift towards memory-centric computing using Processing-In-Memory (PIM) architectures. First, we discuss recent changes in DRAM specifications, focusing on new read disturbance defenses and the security vulnerabilities that emerge with them. We systematically analyze two of the latest industry defenses for read disturbance and introduce LeakyHammer, a new class of attacks that leverage the RowHammer defense-induced memory latency differences to establish communication channels between processes and leak secrets from victim processes. Second, we investigate the security of PIM architectures that enable significant performance and energy benefits and show that the adoption of PIM architectures creates opportunities for critical main memory-based covert-channel and side-channel attacks. We introduce IMPACT, a set of high-throughput, main-memory-based timing attacks that leverage the characteristics of PIM architectures to establish covert and side channels, and describe and evaluate potential defenses.

연사:

Nisa Bostanci is a senior PhD student in the SAFARI Research Group at ETH Zurich, under the supervision of Prof. Onur Mutlu. She is broadly interested in computer architecture and, more specifically, in security, reliability, and safety (robustness) of memory systems, emerging memory and computation paradigms, including Processing-In-Memory architectures (PIM), and designing effective and efficient solutions to address robustness issues in modern and future systems. Her recent works uncover and mitigate new security vulnerabilities that emerge with the adoption of read disturbance solutions and PIM architectures to aid in designing robust future systems.