RiCaSi: Rigorous Cache Side Channel Mitigation via Selective Circuit Compilation

Cache side channels constitute a persistent threat to crypto implementations. In particular, block ciphers are prone to attacks when implemented with a simple lookup-table approach. Implementing crypto as software evaluations of circuits avoids this threat but is very costly. We propose an approach that combines program analysis and circuit compilation to support the selective hardening of regular C implementations against cache side channels. We implement this approach in our toolchain RiCaSi. RiCaSi avoids unnecessary complexity and overhead if it can derive sufficiently strong security guarantees for the original implementation. If necessary, RiCaSi produces a circuit-based, hardened implementation. For this, it leverages established circuit-compilation technology from the area of secure computation. A final program analysis step ensures that the hardening is, indeed, effective.