Network security under siege: the timing attack

Abstract

Although most encryption algorithms are theoretically secure and remain impervious to even the most sophisticated cryptanalytic techniques, new attacks like the timing attack exploit the engineering side of network security. A timing attack is basically a way of deciphering a user's private key information by measuring the time it takes to carry out cryptographic operations. Factors such as branching and conditional statements, RAM cache hits, processor instructions that run in nonfixed time, as well as performance optimizations to bypass unnecessary operations, all contribute to predictability and therefore to the probability of key decryption.