Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2006/349

A Note On Side-Channels Resulting From Dynamic Compilation

D. Page

Abstract: Dynamic compilation systems are of fundamental importance to high performance execution of interpreted languages such as Java. These systems analyse the performance of an application at run-time and aggressively re-compile and optimise code which is deemed critical to performance. However, the premise that the code executed is not the same code as written by the programmer raises a number of important security concerns. In this paper we examine the specific problem that dynamic compilation, through transformation of the code, may introduce side-channel vulnerabilities where before there were none.

Category / Keywords: implementation / side-channels, compilers

Date: received 17 Oct 2006

Contact author: page at cs bris ac uk

Available formats: Postscript (PS) | Compressed Postscript (PS.GZ) | PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20061020:101232 (All versions of this report)

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