← Back to context

Comment by danuker

3 years ago

Would this be vulnerable to a side-channel attack as follows?

1. Record what item was retrieved from disk for a query

2. Run a dictionary through the query system, and see which item matches the record

The server processing has to scan the entire database to answer a query- so the entire database stays in memory, and access patterns tell you nothing about the query.

  • Notably to some who may misinterpret the "stays in memory" aspect: even the copy in memory is fully scanned by every query. So it's not just disk access patterns that don't give anything away, but RAM access patterns.