Temperature Attacks

Confining a program during its execution so that it can´t leak information to other programs is an old concern. Recently, several researchers succeeded in fingerprinting distant machines by measuring temperature side effects on clocks. But can temperature also leak secrets in a computer or a chip? We started by implementing a covert channel between two processes (a sender and a receiver) running on the same machine. Producing heat is simple: all the sender must do is launch massive calculations. To sense temperature in the machine, we considered three options: fan-based solutions, built-in sensors; and faults as heat detectors.