From Trash to Treasure: Timing-Sensitive Garbage Collection

Abstract

This paper studies information flows via timing channels in the presence ofautomatic memory management. We construct a series of example attacks thatillustrate that garbage collectors form a shared resource that can be used toreliably leak sensitive information at a rate of up to 1 byte/sec on a contemporarygeneral-purpose computer. The createdchannel is also observable across a network connection in a datacenter-likesetting. We subsequently present a design of automatic memory management that isprovably resilient against such attacks.