(THESIS DEFENSE) Hardening Trusted Execution Environments Against Microarchitectural Side-Channel Attacks: A Constructive Approach

Speaker: Jules Drean

Speaker Affiliation:  MIT CSAIL

Host: Srini Devadas

Host Affiliation: MIT CSAIL

Date: Thursday, March 13th

Time: 10AM EST

Location: In-person: Building 32 Room G882 (Hewlett)

Zoom Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/95341809842?pwd=EJEAOJBbYAufedZUDUCLn9tKC8t5Zd.1

Abstract: Microarchitectural side channels and transient execution attacks have shattered the security guarantees of existing isolation primitives, including trusted execution environments. Current defenses remain impractical, relying on complex hardware extensions, expensive cryptographic schemes, or formal verification methods that fail to scale. This thesis takes a constructive approach to security by designing and fully implementing two platforms, Citadel and Argos, that demonstrate robust defenses against microarchitectural attacks.

Short Bio: Jules is PhD candidate at MIT CSAIL, co-advised by Srini Devadas and Mengjia Yan. Simply put, he likes to build computers and systems that have interesting security properties. His research intersects trusted hardware, applied cryptography and micro-architectural side channels. He has industry experience working at Microsoft Research and NVIDIA and is the cofounder of Tinfoil, a startup building end-to-end confidential AI.

Thesis Committee: Srini Devadas (Thesis Supervisor), Mengjia Yan, Edward Suh