eprint.iacr.orgpaper

Randomness-Anchored Runtime Discovery of Cryptographic Operations on Linux Using eBPF

This IACR ePrint paper presents a Linux runtime cryptographic discovery system built on eBPF user-space probes that detects both classical and post-quantum (ML-KEM) cryptographic operations as they execute, complementing static binary/SBOM analysis with dynamic observation. It uses "randomness anchoring" — correlating observed key-generation/encapsulation randomness with subsequent crypto API calls in the same process — to raise detection confidence without adding false positives, reporting perfect precision/recall on classical and ML-KEM workloads, median detection latency of 28 μs, and 14–18% overhead on key-generation-bound workloads. A nine-application case study (drawn from/paired with QED datasets) compares static vs. runtime views and shows how eBPF probe coverage limits what can be observed, relevant to building a runtime cryptographic bill of materials for PQC migration compliance.