This is a blog post by CCC Chair Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  As readers on the CCC blog know, the Meltdown and Spectre microprocessor design flaws revealed in early 2018 made clear that many, if not most, computer systems can leak sensitive information via implementation timing “channel.” Fortuitously and concurrent with this revelation, the US National Science Foundation had commissioned a March 2018 workshop on “Side and Covert Channels in Computing Systems” led by Guru Prasadh Venkataramani of George Washington University and Patrick Schaumont of Virginia Tech. The report has just been issued. It provides too many research recommendations to summarize here, but let me whet … Continue reading NSF Workshop Report on Side and Covert Channels in Computing Systems