595C - Automated Worst Case and Side Channel Analysis for Software

As bug detection techniques become more effective in eliminating flaws in software systems, attacks that rely on inherent space-time complexity of algorithms used for building software systems are gaining prominence. If an adversary can generate arbitrary inputs that induce behaviors with expensive space-time resource utilization at the defender's end, in addition to mounting denial-of-service attacks, the adversary can also use the same inputs to facilitate side-channel attacks in order to infer some secret from the observed system behavior. In this seminar we will review recent research results on automated worst-case analysis and quantitative information flow analysis for software systems which can be used to identify vulnerabilities to such attacks.