Security in vehicular embedded systems

Los automóviles modernos cuentan con una gran cantidad de servicios que suponen potenciales puntos de entrada a ataques exteriores, ya sea de manera física o remota. Cada vez se pueden observar más noticias al respecto y es un tema sobre el que hay un gran desconocimiento, tanto por parte de los usuarios como de los propios fabricantes, que en muchas ocasiones no toman las medidas pertinentes, o lo hacen mal y tarde. Sin embargo, se está tratando de aumentar la seguridad en aspectos muy diversos referentes a los vehículos, teniendo en cuenta las imitaciones en procesamiento, tamaño y coste de sus componentes. Este trabajo pretende llevar a cabo un análisis de las distintas situaciones que pueden poner en compromiso un vehículo y las soluciones que la industria y los investigadores han ofrecido, partiendo además desde los aspectos más básicos, como los buses internos CAN de los vehículos, su formato, manera de comunicación, capas y control de errores

Ensuring Cyber-Security in Smart Railway Surveillance with SHIELD

Modern railways feature increasingly complex embedded computing systems for surveillance, that are moving towards fully wireless smart-sensors. Those systems are aimed at monitoring system status from a physical-security viewpoint, in order to detect intrusions and other environmental anomalies. However, the same systems used for physical-security surveillance are vulnerable to cyber-security threats, since they feature distributed hardware and software architectures often interconnected by ‘open networks’, like wireless channels and the Internet. In this paper, we show how the integrated approach to Security, Privacy and Dependability (SPD) in embedded systems provided by the SHIELD framework (developed within the EU funded pSHIELD and nSHIELD research projects) can be applied to railway surveillance systems in order to measure and improve their SPD level. SHIELD implements a layered architecture (node, network, middleware and overlay) and orchestrates SPD mechanisms based on ontology models, appropriate metrics and composability. The results of prototypical application to a real-world demonstrator show the effectiveness of SHIELD and justify its practical applicability in industrial settings

Trust Evaluation for Embedded Systems Security research challenges identified from an incident network scenario

This paper is about trust establishment and trust evaluations techniques. A short background about trust, trusted computing and security in embedded systems is given. An analysis has been done of an incident network scenario with roaming users and a set of basic security needs has been identified. These needs have been used to derive security requirements for devices and systems, supporting the considered scenario. Using the requirements, a list of major security challenges for future research regarding trust establishment in dynamic networks have been collected and elaboration on some different approaches for future research has been done.This work was supported by the Knowledge foundation and RISE within the ARIES project

Automated Dynamic Firmware Analysis at Scale: A Case Study on Embedded Web Interfaces

Embedded devices are becoming more widespread, interconnected, and web-enabled than ever. However, recent studies showed that these devices are far from being secure. Moreover, many embedded systems rely on web interfaces for user interaction or administration. Unfortunately, web security is known to be difficult, and therefore the web interfaces of embedded systems represent a considerable attack surface. In this paper, we present the first fully automated framework that applies dynamic firmware analysis techniques to achieve, in a scalable manner, automated vulnerability discovery within embedded firmware images. We apply our framework to study the security of embedded web interfaces running in Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) embedded devices, such as routers, DSL/cable modems, VoIP phones, IP/CCTV cameras. We introduce a methodology and implement a scalable framework for discovery of vulnerabilities in embedded web interfaces regardless of the vendor, device, or architecture. To achieve this goal, our framework performs full system emulation to achieve the execution of firmware images in a software-only environment, i.e., without involving any physical embedded devices. Then, we analyze the web interfaces within the firmware using both static and dynamic tools. We also present some interesting case-studies, and discuss the main challenges associated with the dynamic analysis of firmware images and their web interfaces and network services. The observations we make in this paper shed light on an important aspect of embedded devices which was not previously studied at a large scale. We validate our framework by testing it on 1925 firmware images from 54 different vendors. We discover important vulnerabilities in 185 firmware images, affecting nearly a quarter of vendors in our dataset. These experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach

Security of wired communication in embedded systems

Abstract. The purpose of this thesis was to study the security of wired communication in embedded systems, particularly the security of the Inter-Integrated Circuit, alternatively known as I2C. The security was assessed by the system’s ability to notice fraudulent data inputs from an Arduino-based copy of a peripheral device. The results of the experiment indicate that forging a copy of a peripheral device is straightforward and plausible, which indicates that further research is needed to develop preventative measures. Especially since peripheral devices can be a potential attack vector for larger systems.Langallisen tiedonsiirron turvallisuus sulautetuissa järjestelmissä. Tiivistelmä. Tässä työssä tutkittiin langallisen tiedonsiirron turvallisuutta sulautetuissa järjestelmissä. Tiedonsiirtoprotokolla, jota käytettiin työssä, oli I2C. Turvallisuus arvioitiin järjestelmän kyvyllä erottaa valheelliset datan syötöt Arduino pohjaisesta oheislaitteen kopiosta. Tämän tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että oheislaitteiden kopioiminen on suoraviivaista ja mahdollista, joka osoittaa lisätutkimuksen tarpeen aiheeseen liittyen. Erityisesti, koska laajemman järjestelmän oheislaitteet voivat olla mahdollinen hyökkäysvektori järjestelmään itse