Code Polymorphism Meets Code Encryption: Confidentiality and Side-Channel Protection of Software Components

In this article, we consider that, in practice, attack scenarios involving side-channel analysis combine two successive phases: an phase, targeting the extraction of information about target and identification possible vulnerabilities, exploitation applying techniques on candidate vulnerabilities. We advocate that protections need to cover these phases be effective against real-life attacks. present PolEn , a toolchain processor architecture countermeasures provide mitigation attacks: As countermeasure our approach considers use code encryption; as polymorphism, because it relies runtime generation, its combination with encryption is particularly challenging. Code supported by extension such machine instructions are only decrypted inside CPU, which effectively prevents reverse engineering or any useful from memory dumps. polymorphism implemented software means. It regularly changes observable behaviour program, making unpredictable for attacker, hence reducing possibility exploit leakages. prototype implementation, based RISC-V Spike simulator modified LLVM toolchain. experimental evaluation, illustrate reduces For protected functions evaluated, static increases factor 5 22, corresponding joint application polymorphism. The overhead, terms execution time, ranges between 1.8 4.6.