Theoretical Fundamentals of Gate Level Information Flow Tracking

Abstract

Information flow tracking is an effective tool in computer security for detecting unintended information flows. However, software based information flow tracking implementations have drawbacks in preciseness and performance. As a result, researchers have begun to explore tracking information flow in hardware, and more specifically, understanding the interference of individual bits of information through logical functions. Such gate level information flow tracking (GLIFT) can track information flow in a system at the granularity of individual bits. However, the theoretical basis for GLIFT, which is essential to its adoption in real applications, has never been thoroughly studied. This paper provides fundamental analysis of GLIFT by introducing definitions, properties, and the imprecision problem with a commonly used shadow logic generation method. This paper also presents a solution to this imprecision problem and provides results that show this impreciseness can be tolerated for the benefit of lower area and delay.