2026-07-22T22:13:56Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:24720 2026-01-21T09:56:02Z ddc:004 open_access

Cache Timing Leakages in Zero-Knowledge Protocols Mukherjee, Shibam Rechberger, Christian Schofnegger, Markus zero-knowledge protocol cache timing side-channel leakage The area of modern zero-knowledge proof systems has seen a significant rise in popularity over the last couple of years, with new techniques and optimized constructions emerging on a regular basis. As the field matures, the aspect of implementation attacks becomes more relevant, however side-channel attacks on zero-knowledge proof systems have seen surprisingly little treatment so far. In this paper, we give an overview of potential attack vectors and show that some of the underlying finite field libraries, and implementations of heavily used components like hash functions using them, are vulnerable w.r.t. cache attacks on CPUs. On the positive side, we demonstrate that the computational overhead to protect against these attacks is relatively small. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Shibam Mukherjee and Christian Rechberger and Markus Schofnegger 2025 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 354, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.1 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247201 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.1 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode