${MC}^{3}$: Memory Contention-Based Covert Channel Communication on Shared DRAM System-on-Chips

Ismet Dagli, James Crea, Soner Seçkiner, Yuanchao Xu, Selçuk Köse, Mehmet E. Belviranli

Abstract: Shared memory system-on-chips (SM-SoCs) are ubiquitously employed by a wide range of computing platforms, including edge/IoT devices, autonomous systems, and smartphones. In SM-SoCs, system-wide shared memory enables a convenient and cost-effective mechanism for making data accessible across dozens of processing units (PUs), such as CPU cores and domain-specific accelerators. Due to the diverse computational characteristics of the PUs they embed, SM-SoCs often do not employ a shared last-level cache (LLC). Although covert channel attacks have been widely studied in shared memory systems, high-throughput communication has previously been feasible only by relying on an LLC or by possessing privileged or physical access to the shared memory subsystem. In this study, we introduce a new memory-contention-based covert communication attack, $\boldsymbol{MC}^{3}$, which specifically targets shared system memory in mobile SoCs. Unlike existing attacks, our approach achieves high-throughput communication without the need for an LLC or elevated access to the system. We explore the effectiveness of our methodology by demonstrating the tradeoff between the channel transmission rate and the robustness of the communication. We evaluate $\boldsymbol{MC}^{3}$ on NVIDIA Orin AGX, NX, and Nano platforms and achieve transmission rates up to 6.4 Kbps with less than 1% error rate.

External IDs:dblp:conf/date/DagliCS0KB25