Timing attack on NoC-based systems: Prime+Probe attack and NoC-based protection

Many authors have shown how to break the AES cryptographic algorithm with side channel attacks; specially the timing attacks oriented to caches, like Prime+Probe. In this paper, we present two practical timing attacks on NoC that improve Prime+Probe technique, the P+P Firecracker, and P+P Arrow. Our attacks target the communication between an ARM Cortex-A9 core and a shared cache memory. Furthermore, we evaluate a secure enhanced NoC as a countermeasure against the timing attack. Finally, we demonstrate that attacks on MPSoCs through the NoC are a real threat and need to be further explored.