The security risks of power measurements in multicores
Philipp Miedl, Lothar Thiele · 2018
Two of the main goals of power management in modern multicore processors are reducing the average power dissipation and delivering the maximum performance up to the physical limits of the system, when demanded. To achieve these goals, hardware manufacturers and operating system providers include sophisticated power and performance management systems, which require detailed information about the current processor state. For example, Intel processors offer the possibility to measure the power dissipation of the processor. In this work, we are evaluating whether such power measurements can be used to establish a covert channel between two isolated applications on the same system; the power covert channel.