Time Trial - Racing Towards Practical Remote Timing Attacks (Blackhat 2014)

Find the whitepaper here: www.matasano.com/research/
Talk at Blackhat USA 2014 by Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin.

Attacks on software become increasingly sophisticated over time and while the community has a good understanding of many classes of vulnerabilities that are commonly exploited, the practical relevance of side-channel attacks is much less understood.

One common side-channel vulnerability that is present in many web applications today are timing side-channels which allow an attacker to extract information based on different response times. These side-channel vulnerabilities are easily introduced wherever sensitive values such as credentials or API keys are processed before responding to a client. Even though there is basic awareness of timing side-channel attacks in the community, they often go unnoticed or are flagged during code audits without a true understanding of their exploitability in practice.

In this talk, we provide both a tool 'time trial' and guidance on the detection and exploitability of timing side-channel vulnerabilities in common web application scenarios. Specifically, the focus of our presentation is on remote timing attacks, which are performed over a LAN, in a cloud environment, or on the Internet. To illustrate this, we first present experimental timing results that demonstrate how precisely timing can be measured and, more importantly, which timing differences can be distinguished remotely. Second, we compare our results with timing differences that are typically encountered in modern web frameworks and servers. The discussed attack scenarios include database queries, message authentication codes, web API keys, OAuth tokens, and login functions.

Our presentation has significance for a wide spectrum of the conference audience. Attendees in defensive security roles will gain a better understanding of the threat timing side-channel vulnerabilities pose and, based on the demonstrated attacks, will be better able to evaluate the severity and impact of a successful side-channel attack. Attendees in a penetration testing role will learn how to distinguish theoretical timing attacks from legitimately exploitable flaws by using our tool 'time trial'. Finally, attendees focused on research implications will receive a comprehensive update on the state-of-the-art in exploiting timing attacks in practice.

Transcript

1. Joel Sandin Time Trial Racing Towards Practical Remote Timing Attacks @DanlAMayer http://cysec.org jsandin@matasano.com Daniel A. Mayer
2. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Who we are… ‣ Daniel A. Mayer • Senior Appsec consultant with Matasano Security. • Ph.D. in Computer Science (Security and Privacy). ‣ Joel Sandin • Appsec consultant with Matasano ! ‣ Matasano Security • Application Security Consultancy. • Offices in New York, Chicago, Sunnyvale. • Part of 2
3. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Agenda 1. Timing Side-Channels 2. Remote Timing Attacks 3. Our Tool: Time Trial 4. Timing Attacks in Practice 5. Conclusion 3
4. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Side-Channels 4
5. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Side-Channel Attacks 5
6. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Side-Channel Attacks 5
7. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Examples of Side-Channels ‣ Power consumption ‣ RF emissions ‣ Sound ‣ Processing Time ! ‣ Really, anything that can be measured and is related to a secret. 6
8. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial ‣ Many vulnerabilities well understood • XSS, CSRF, SQL injection • Developers becoming more aware • Frameworks: Harder to introduce bugs ! ‣ Side-channels: Less so • Easy to introduce using “innocent” operators • Hard to observe and test for • Have to go out of one’s way to prevent them “Regular Vulns” vs. Side-Channels 7
9. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Side-Channels ‣ Response time differs depending on computation ! ‣ Attacker can learn information about system • sensitive credentials • internal system state ! ‣ Easy to introduce 8 ‣ Exploitable remotely?
10. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Side-Channels 8 ‣ Exploitable remotely?
11. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial post '/login' do! if not valid_user?(params[:user]) ! "Username or Password incorrect"! else! if verify_password(params[:user], params[:password])! "Access granted"! else! "Username or Password incorrect"! end! end! end! Valid user wrong password Basic Timing Side-Channel 9 Invalid user
12. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Attacks ‣ Reason about system based on response time 10 Attacker Target POST /login with username, password Username or Password incorrect valid_user? verify_password Username or Password incorrect Access granted Start t_0 t_1 Invalid user Valid user
13. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Prior Work! ‣ Rich history of timing attacks in crypto, e.g. • Kocher, 1996
 Timing Attacks on Implementations of Diffie-Hellman, RSA, DSS, and Other Systems • Brumley and Boneh, 2005
 Remote Timing Attacks are Practical ! ‣ Excellent empirical studies, e.g. • Crosby et al., 2009
 Opportunities and Limits of Remote Timing Attacks • Lawson and Nelson, 2010
 Exploiting Timing Attacks In Widespread Systems 11
14. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Remote Timing Attacks 12
15. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial ‣ Local attacks • Precise measurement of execution time • Can minimize external influences Local vs. Remote - Challenges 13 + Signal Jitter Measured ‣ Remote attacks • Propagation time added to the measurement. • Network delays add jitter.
16. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Real Jitter ‣ Additional Caveat: • Distribution isn’t Gaussian, hard to model • Skewed, multiple modes 14
17. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial ‣ Measure a large number of response times ‣ Measurement must be related to processing time! ‣ Median and minimum not good indicators Statistical Methods 15 Based on Crosby et al. 0 2 4 6 9 10 12 94 98 102 106 110 114 Server Processing Time Measured Response Time 1 to ~20% Minimum (0%)
18. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial ‣ The Box Test ‣ Compare intervals induced by percentiles ‣ Percentiles to be determined empirically 0.52 0.53 0.54 0.55 0.56 0.57 0.58 0.59 0.6 Time / [ms] 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Frequency 100 ms 105 ms Statistical Methods 16
19. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial ‣ The Box Test ‣ Compare intervals induced by percentiles ‣ Percentiles to be determined empirically 0.52 0.53 0.54 0.55 0.56 0.57 0.58 0.59 0.6 Time / [ms] 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Frequency 100 ms 105 ms 6% Statistical Methods 16
20. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial ‣ The Box Test ‣ Compare intervals induced by percentiles ‣ Percentiles to be determined empirically 0.52 0.53 0.54 0.55 0.56 0.57 0.58 0.59 0.6 Time / [ms] 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Frequency 100 ms 105 ms 8% Statistical Methods 16
21. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial ‣ The Box Test ‣ Compare intervals induced by percentiles ‣ Percentiles to be determined empirically 0.52 0.53 0.54 0.55 0.56 0.57 0.58 0.59 0.6 Time / [ms] 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Frequency 100 ms 105 ms Statistical Methods 16
22. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial New Tool: Time Trial 17
23. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Why a tool for timing attacks? ‣ No way to demonstrate impact ! ! ‣ Separate theoretical issues 
 from exploitable vulnerabilities ! ! ‣ Reframes the debate about practicality of these attacks 18
24. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Time Trial ‣ What Time Trial is: • A framework for capturing precise timing • A tool for feasibility analysis • A generator of visual proof-of-concepts ! ‣ What Time Trial is NOT (yet): • A read-to-use exploit framework • An automated attack tool 19
25. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Goals and Design ‣ Separate “racer” sensor from analytic front end. • Front end: Python + Qt • Racer: C++ ‣ Schedule trials and analyze results 20 1. Define Trials in the GUI 1 2. Redis-Backed RQ Target 3. Racer Executes 4. Results in Queue 5. View/Analyze Results
26. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial How to do precise time measurements? 21
27. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial How to do precise time measurements? 21
28. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial How to do precise time measurements? 21
29. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Optimizations ‣ Use clock_gettime for nanosecond timer • Using MONOTONIC clock ! ‣ Used fixed, reserved CPU core • GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="maxcpus=2 isolcpus=1" • CPU affinity ! ‣ Run with real-time priority ! ‣ Disable frequency scaling 22
30. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial DEMO: Time Trial 23
31. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Lets get some data! 24
32. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Data across different networks ‣ Analyzed response time distributions for different networks: • LAN • Internet at large • Cloud environments ! ! ! ‣ In order to exploit: distinguish response times. • Was the response t_0 or t_1 for given input? 25 Attacker Target POST /login with username, password Username or Password incorrect valid_user? verify_password Username or Password incorrect Access granted Start t_0 t_1
33. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Feasibility Based on Echo Trials ‣ What timing differences can be distinguished in practice? • Similar to the approach by Crosby et al. 26 Attacker Target “1,000” Start measured time sleep for 1,000 ns “1,000”
34. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: LAN 27 1,000 Repetitions
35. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: LAN 27 1,000 Repetitions
36. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: LAN 27 1,000 Repetitions
37. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: LAN 27 1,000 Repetitions
38. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: LAN 28 1,000 Repetitions 10,000 Repetitions 100,000 Repetitions
39. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: LAN Limit ‣ 100 ns difference clear ‣ < 100 ns inconsistent 29 TKTK 1,000,000
40. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: Loopback ‣ Better than 30 ns 30 100,000
41. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: WAN Limit 31 100,000
42. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: EC2 Limit 32 100,000!
43. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Resolution: EC2 Limit 32 100,000!
44. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Overview of Results 33 1 ms 1 µs 100 ns < 100 ns Loopback LAN EC2 WAN
45. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Impact on Real-world Applications ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 34
46. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Timing Attacks in Practice 35
47. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial String comparison ‣ Most string comparison return early • Leaks timing information about which byte differed 36 Attacker Target e9aa Start t_0 Valid Credential: e993 Credential invalid i == cred valid invalid e 9 9 3 e 9 a a e9aa == e993 == == == == t_1 Credential invalid String Comparison Most Programm
48. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial String comparison ‣ Introduced when attacker-controlled data is compared to a secret ! ‣ Commonly prone to timing attacks: • HMACs (e.g., session state) • Web API keys • OAuth token checks • Middleware authentication ! ‣ Exploitable remotely? 37
49. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial String Comparison: Conclusions ‣ Most 64-bit OSes compare 8 bytes at a time! • http://rdist.root.org/2010/08/05/optimized-memcmp-leaks-useful- timing-differences/ ! 38
50. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Internet of Things ‣ BeagleBone Black: 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 • Java benchmarks put it within reach, exit on first byte: 39
51. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Microbenchmarks (in nanoseconds) 40 Language Function Lawson 2010* i5-3210M 2.50GHz Cortex-A8 1GHz per byte per word per byte C memcmp 0.719 0.243 1.37 C strcmp - 0.41 4.04 Ruby str == 0.840 0.36 1.75 Python str == 1.400 0.224 1.48 Java String.equals 40.594 7.65 18.91 * Hardware: AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHz ‣ Resolution < differences of multiple bytes ‣ Remote exploitation highly unlikely in practice!
52. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Branching ‣ Different code path based on secret state ! ‣ Timing difference depends on application ! ‣ Which operation performed in each code path? 41 Attacker Target POST /login with username, password Username or Password incorrect valid_user? verify_password Username or Password incorrect Access granted Start t_0 t_1
53. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Branching ‣ User enumeration (SHA-256) • (Not a SHA-256 attack!) 42 LAN WAN
54. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Time-Based Padding Oracle ‣ AES CBC Padding Oracle ‣ Distinguish • Wrong Padding • Other Processing Error 43 Attacker Target GET /decrypt?data=[encrypted data] an error occurred. decryption_successful? process_data an error occurred. data processed succesfully. Start t_0 t_1
55. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Time-Based Padding Oracle ‣ Perform SQLite query when decrypt successful • Actual difference depends on application! 44
56. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial DEMO: Time-Based CBC Padding Oracle 45
57. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Take Away: Microbenchmarks ‣ Computing performance continues to improve • Comparison-based vulnerabilities difficult to exploit. ! ‣ Branching-based often feasible ! ‣ Embedded systems at greater risk • Java on ARM a feasible target • Attacking string-comparison on Arduino realistic. 46
58. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Preventing timing attacks ‣ Ensure sensitive operations take constant time • Analyze for branching side-channels • This is hard! ! ‣ Use constant time comparison functions • See our white paper ! ‣ Best practices • Throttle or lock out misbehaving clients • Monitor for failed requests 47
59. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Future Plans ‣ More empirical studies ! ‣ Implement (feasible!) attacks ! ‣ Jitter changes over time • Alternate long and short measurements ! ! Send bug reports, feature / pull requests! 48
60. Daniel A. Mayer and Joel Sandin » Time Trial Thanks! Questions? 49 https://github.com/dmayer/time_trial ‣ Daniel A. Mayer mayer@cysec.org @DanlAMayer ‣ Joel Sandin jsandin@matasano.com http://matasano.com/research/