Dr. Guru Venkataramani and his colleague, Dr. Patrick Schaumont (University of Vermont), served as chairs of the March 22-23 National Science Foundation (NSF) Workshop on Side and Covert Channels in Computing Systems. The workshop was hosted by GW at the Marvin Center, and it created a unique forum to study the threat of side-channel and covert-channel leakage in computing, with the participation of different communities: computer architects, systems researchers, and hardware designers. Participants identified potential challenges in existing computer design methodologies and discussed the strategies to minimize information leakage. The workshop also featured keynote talks by Dr. Yan Solihin (North Carolina State University) and meltdown/spectre authors, Dr. Dan Genkin (University of Pennsylvania) and Dr. Yuval Yarom (University of Adelaide).
A comprehensive workshop report will be produced shortly, summarizing the findings and discussion on the current state-of-the-art and projections in terms of detecting, mitigating, and defending against side and covert channels.