Timing-based Inference: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

ABSTRACT

Timing can provide a new degree of freedom for communication and causal inference,  but it may also be exploited to learn or leak information by adversaries.  We investigate the power of timing analysis in three scenarios. First, we quantify the amount of information leakage in timing side channels and provide some counter measures. Second, we present robust and transparent steganographic timing codes. Finally, we introduce efficient algorithms for causal inference in networks.