Side-channel attacks exploiting Open vSwitch cache hierarchy remotely

Daewoo Kim and Sihang Liu have submitted an arXiv paper demonstrating remote side-channel attacks targeting Open vSwitch (OVS) cache structures.

• Main announcement: The authors submitted an arXiv paper (arXiv:2601.15632) on 22 Jan 2026 describing three remote attack primitives against the OVS cache hierarchy: remote covert channels, a header recovery attack that leaks packet header fields, and a remote packet rate monitoring attack; the submission includes PDF and TeX source and evaluates mitigation solutions.
• Background and details: The paper characterizes the caching system inside OVS from a security perspective, demonstrates practical attacks that break isolation and confidentiality guarantees in virtualized environments, and discusses/evaluates concrete defenses and mitigations; the arXiv entry lists file size 1,304 KB and provides a DOI (10.48550/arXiv.2601.15632).