SaTC: CORE: Small: An Exploration of Schedule-Based Vulnerabilities In Real-Time Embedded Systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Many safety-critical systems such as automobiles, aircraft, medical devices, and power plants are controlled by real-time, embedded systems. As such systems are interconnected via networks such as the Internet, they have become increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. This project is studying vulnerabilities of such systems, how attackers might avoid detection, and protection strategies. This project focuses on the surveillance phase of a cyber attack against an embedded, real-time system (RTS). The researchers are addressing the following question: How can an adversary extract critical information about an operational RTS, while avoiding detection? In this environment, task scheduling (e.g., when will an import program be executed?) is exceptionally critical information, enabling an attacker to launch a targeted attack against specific, important tasks. To succeed in gathering the necessary information and launching an attack, the attacker must avoid perturbing the system in ways that might reveal his or her presence. The researchers are developing algorithms and side-channel metrics to study what they could reveal about system schedule characteristics and task start times and duration estimates. Based on these studies, the team is designing randomization-based mitigations for such attacks. Results are evaluated both through simulation and through experiments on real embedded platforms.