Key-insulated symmetric key cryptography and mitigating attacks against cryptographic cloud software

Abstract

Software-based attacks (e.g., malware) pose a big threat to cryptographic software because they can compromise the associated cryptographic keys in their entirety. In this paper, we investigate key-insulated symmetric key cryptography, which can mitigate the damage caused by repeated attacks against cryptographic software. To illustrate the feasibility of key-insulated symmetric key cryptography, we also report a proof-of-concept implementation in the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) environment.