Re: Remote Timing Techniques over TCP/IP

From: Syzop (syzat_private)
Date: Thu Apr 18 2002 - 21:06:17 PDT

  • Next message: Solar Designer: "Re: Remote Timing Techniques over TCP/IP"

    Hi,
    
    Mauro Lacy wrote:
    
    > This paper describes remote timing techniques based on TCP/IP intrinsic operation and options. The techniques are used for careful observation of the TCP/IP data stream to detect timing differences in the operation of the remote application and relate them to selected data and/or phenomena.
    
    This reminds me of http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/82/185167 (+see the thread) which
    also discusses something like this (timing techniques) and the "additional noise" such as
    task switches, etc.
    
    > I'll quote here a comment by Paul Kocher, who told me in a private communication
    >
    > "You might want to try some ... statistical attacks ...
    > ... -- using them, even very tiny differences (<1 us) can
    > be resolved even if there is quite a lot of measurement error
    > (>1 ms)... . The general math required
    > is quite simple - you'd want to look for the difference between
    > the *average* time when [for example] n bytes of a password
    > are correct and the average time when n+1 bytes of the password
    > are correct."
    
    I also remember this reply with another aproach to this problem:
    (from http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/82/186161 )
    Quote:
    > Why noise-filtering? Since there seem to be no invalid low numbers,
    > just take the minimum of a certain amount of tries (1000, 10000)
    > and check whether those give you a clue -- i.e. try to find
    > the ones with the lowest noise and compare them.
    
    I didn't read this all yet (it's a bit late), but it looks very interresting...
    
        Bram Matthys.
    



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