Practice Makes (Im)Perfect: A Look Back at Benchmarking Practices for Microarchitectural Side-Channel Attacks
Meta-analysis of side-channel attack benchmarking reveals widespread methodological inconsistencies, calling into question the reproducibility of many published results.
Summary written by editorial AI · Source link below
arXiv:2609.03893v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Microarchitectural side-channel research has grown at an exceptional pace in recent years, increasing the need for rigorous and meaningful benchmarking. Early attack papers typically relied on indirect proxies, such as covert-channel bandwidth or key-recovery on naive AES and RSA implementations, setting de facto standards that many subsequent works continued to replicate, sometimes by directly comparing against raw numbers from prior work. While
Editorial Analysis
Unreliable side-channel benchmarks can lead enterprises to misjudge hardware risk exposure; better methodology strengthens the evidence base for procurement and mitigation decisions.
Forward-looking interpretation drafted by editorial AI under human review — not a reproduction of the source. See methodology.
External link — opens at arXiv Crypto & Security in a new tab.
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