Dynamic analysis of IoT systems based on full-system emulation in QEMU

Abstract

The sweeping evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) requires the development of methods and tools for analyzing such devices. A significant part of similar devices run under operating systems (OS) of the Linux family. Direct application of existing tools for analyzing software (SW) of this class of devices is not always possible. In the process of researching embedded Linux OS, the ELF (embedded linux fuzz) tool was created, which is presented in this work. The article deals with the analysis of systems built exclusively on the basis of Linux kernels. ELF environment is designed for dynamic analysis of devices based on full-system emulation in QEMU. ELF was based on the following aspects: performing software testing and analysis of real devices in an environment as close as possible to their «native» execution environment; integration with existing fuzzing tools; the ability to conduct distributed analysis.