“These results must be false”: A usability evaluation of constant-time analysis tools

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14330%2F24%3A00135654" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14330/24:00135654 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/fourne" target="_blank" >https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/fourne</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

“These results must be false”: A usability evaluation of constant-time analysis tools

Original language description

Cryptography secures our online interactions, transactions, and trust. To achieve this goal, not only do the cryptographic primitives and protocols need to be secure in theory, they also need to be securely implemented by cryptographic library developers in practice. However, implementing cryptographic algorithms securely is challenging, even for skilled professionals, which can lead to vulnerable implementations, especially to side-channel attacks. For timing attacks, a severe class of side-channel attacks, there exist a multitude of tools that are supposed to help cryptographic library developers assess whether their code is vulnerable to timing attacks. Previous work has established that despite an interest in writing constant-time code, cryptographic library developers do not routinely use these tools due to their general lack of usability. However, the precise factors affecting the usability of these tools remain unexplored. While many of the tools are developed in an academic context, we believe that it is worth exploring the factors that contribute to or hinder their effective use by cryptographic library developers. To assess what contributes to and detracts from usability of tools that verify constant-timeness (CT), we conducted a two-part usability study with 24 (post) graduate student participants on 6 tools across diverse tasks that approximate real-world use cases for cryptographic library developers. We find that all studied tools are affected by similar usability issues to varying degrees, with no tool excelling in usability, and usability issues preventing their effective use. Based on our results, we recommend that effective tools for verifying CT need usable documentation, simple installation, easy to adapt examples, clear output corresponding to CT violations, and minimal noninvasive code markup. We contribute first steps to achieving these with limited academic resources, with our documentation, examples, and installation scripts.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

D - Article in proceedings

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10201 - Computer sciences, information science, bioinformathics (hardware development to be 2.2, social aspect to be 5.8)

Project

<a href="/en/project/VJ02010010" target="_blank" >VJ02010010: Tools for AI-enhanced Security Verification of Cryptographic Devices</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Article name in the collection

33rd USENIX Security Symposium

ISBN

9781939133441

ISSN

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e-ISSN

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Number of pages

18

Pages from-to

6705-6722

Publisher name

USENIX Association

Place of publication

Philadelphia, US

Event location

Philadelphia, US

Event date

Aug 14, 2024

Type of event by nationality

WRD - Celosvětová akce

UT code for WoS article

001333860308002