{"slug": "secure-compilation-of-probabilistic-side-channel-countermeasures", "title": "Secure Compilation of Probabilistic Side-Channel Countermeasures", "summary": "Researchers have developed a language- and leakage-model-agnostic framework for provably secure compilation of probabilistic side-channel countermeasures, formalizing a deterministic leakage-preservation relation that implies preservation of probabilistic security notions including d-NI and d-SNI for masking and cryptographic constant-time. Using the Rocq proof assistant, the researchers proved that a model of the core pipeline and several optimizing passes of the Jasmin compiler preserve security in the value-probing model with glitches, and they built libmasking, an open-source library of arbitrary-order masked gadgets in Jasmin that compiles to ARM and RISC-V assembly, provides C bindings, and is benchmarked on real hardware. The work reduces preservation to a per-pass simulation argument on deterministic traces, avoiding probabilistic proof obligations normally reserved for high-assurance cryptography frameworks like EasyCrypt.", "body_md": "Probabilistic countermeasures are a common means of protecting programs against side-channels. These countermeasures are hard to implement and are routinely broken by compilers. Proving that a compiler preserves probabilistic side-channel security directly would require reasoning about perfect simulatability of distributions, a challenging technique normally reserved for high-assurance cryptography in frameworks like EasyCrypt and out of scope for compiler correctness.\nIn this paper, we present a language- and leakage-model-agnostic framework for provably secure compilation of probabilistic side-channel security notions. Our main contribution is formalizing a deterministic leakage-preservation relation that implies preservation of probabilistic security notions, including d-NI and d-SNI for masking and cryptographic constant-time. Our framework establishes the same guarantees without probabilistic proof obligations, reducing preservation to a per-pass simulation argument on deterministic traces.\nWe use the Rocq proof assistant to prove that a model of the core pipeline and several optimizing passes of the Jasmin compiler preserve security in the value-probing model with glitches. We also show how to harden against transition leakage with lightweight annotations at the source level. On top of this, we build libmasking, an open-source library of arbitrary-order masked gadgets in Jasmin that securely compiles to ARM and RISC-V assembly, provides C language bindings, and is benchmarked on real hardware. Together, these contributions are a step towards programming environments in which masked code is written or generated, verified at the source level, optimized, and compiled without breaking security.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/secure-compilation-of-probabilistic-side-channel-countermeasures", "canonical_source": "https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/2510", "published_at": "2026-10-16 13:26:19+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-17 10:03:32.265875+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety"], "entities": ["Rocq", "Jasmin", "libmasking", "EasyCrypt", "ARM", "RISC-V"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/secure-compilation-of-probabilistic-side-channel-countermeasures", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/secure-compilation-of-probabilistic-side-channel-countermeasures.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/secure-compilation-of-probabilistic-side-channel-countermeasures.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/secure-compilation-of-probabilistic-side-channel-countermeasures.jsonld"}}