April 7-10, 2025 | Toronto, Canada

Tooling for Detecting Timing Leaks (Not Only) in Quantum-Safe Implementations (Q31a)

20 Sep 2024
10:45

Tooling for Detecting Timing Leaks (Not Only) in Quantum-Safe Implementations (Q31a)

Timing side-channels are often within the threat model of software implementations of cryptographic algorithms. However, there have been instances of subtle bugs in implementations during the NIST PQC standardization. Kyberslash is a recent example of a potential timing vulnerability in Kyber that propagated to several downstream libraries, some employing constant-time tooling that proved ineffective. This talk will present examples of timing vulnerabilities, showcasing effective detection tooling and its limitations. Challenges such as false positives, configuration-dependency, and micro-architectural behavior will be highlighted. Furthermore, the talk proposes integration of tooling sets into CI pipelines to detect timing issues early in development.