Enhancing security of NVM-based main memory with dynamic Feistel network mapping

作     者：Fang-ting HUANG Dan FENG Wen XIA Wen ZHOU Yu-cheng ZHANG Min FU Chun-tao JIANG Yu-kun ZHOU 

作者机构：Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics Wuhan 430074 China MOE Key Laboratory of Information Storage System Wuhan 430074 China School of Computer Science and Technology Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan 430074 China 

出 版 物：《Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering》 (信息与电子工程前沿（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2018年第19卷第7期

页      面：847-863页

核心收录：

学科分类：08[工学] 081201[工学-计算机系统结构] 0812[工学-计算机科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 

基　　金：Project supported by the National High-Tech R&D Program(863)of China(Nos.2015AA015301 and 2015AA016701) the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.61303046,61472153,61502190,and 61232004) the State Key Laboratory of Computer Architecture(No.CARCH201505) the Wuhan Applied Basic Research Project,China(No.2015010101010004) the Engineering Research Center of Data Storage Systems and Technology,Ministry of Education,China 

主　　题：Non-volatile memory (NVM) Endurance Wear leveling Timing attack 

摘      要：As promising alternatives in building future main memory systems, emerging non-volatile memory(NVM) technologies can increase memory capacity in a cost-effective and power-efficient way. However, NVM is facing security threats due to its limited write endurance: a malicious adversary can wear out the cells and cause the NVM system to fail quickly. To address this issue, several wear-leveling schemes have been proposed to evenly distribute write traffic in a security-aware manner. In this study, we present a new type of timing attack, remapping timing attack(RTA), based on information leakage from the remapping latency difference in NVM. Our analysis and experimental results show that RTA can cause three of the latest wear-leveling schemes(i.e., region-based start-gap,security refresh, and multi-way wear leveling) to lose their effectiveness in several days(even minutes), causing failure of NVM. To defend against such an attack, we further propose a novel wear-leveling scheme called the ‘security region-based start-gap(security RBSG) , which is a two-stage strategy using a dynamic Feistel network to enhance the simple start-gap wear leveling with level-adjustable security assurance. The theoretical analysis and evaluation results show that the proposed security RBSG not only performs well when facing traditional malicious attacks, but also better defends against RTA.