Towards Firmware Analysis of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) - Applying Symbolic Analysis to IIoT Firmware Vetting

Palavicini, Geancarlo; Bryan, Josiah; Sheets, Eaven; Kline, Megan; Miguel, John San

doi:10.5220/0006393704700477

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Once the malicious firmware is transferred into the targeted microcontroller, the attacker would only need the microcontroller's architecture which can be easily obtained from its manual [34]. In a reverse engineering attack, the attacker obtains the source code of the software or firmware used in the embedded device, and hence gains access to confidential information such as hard-coded credentials [35]. An attacker can also execute various malicious software (malware) to infect a given microcontroller [36].…”

Section: A Physical Layermentioning

confidence: 99%

Security Analysis of a Digital Twin Framework Using Probabilistic Model Checking

et al. 2023

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Digital Twins (DTs) have been gaining popularity in various applications, such as smart manufacturing, smart energy, smart mobility, and smart healthcare. In simple terms, DT is described as a virtual replica of a given physical product, system, or process. It consists of three major segments: the physical entity, its virtual counterpart, and the connections between them. While the data is collected from a physical entity, processed at the virtual layer, and accessed in the form of a DT at the application layer, it is exposed to several security risks. To ensure the applicability of a DT system, it is imperative to understand these security risks and their implications. However, there is a lack of a framework that can be used to assess the security of a DT. This paper presents a framework in which the security of a DT can be analyzed with the help of a formal verification technique. The framework captures the defense of the system at different layers and considers various attacks at each layer. The security of the DT system is represented as a statetransition system and the security properties are captured in temporal logic. Probabilistic model checking (PMC) is used to verify the systems against these properties. In particular, the framework is used to analyze the probability of success and the cost of various potential attacks that can occur at each layer in a DT system. The applicability of the proposed framework is demonstrated with the help of a detailed case study in the healthcare domain.INDEX TERMS Digital twin security, security analysis, probabilistic model checking, Markov decision process, discrete time Markov chain.

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Section: A Physical Layermentioning

confidence: 99%

Security Analysis of a Digital Twin Framework Using Probabilistic Model Checking

et al. 2023

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“…They evaluated the framework using 2794 malicious apps with high detection accuracy. Palavicini et al [74] performed static analysis on IoT firmware to avoid path explosion when dynamically analyzing complex binaries with symbolic execution using a software emulator. Yao et al [16] identified a previously unknown vulnerability which is known as privilege separation vulnerability.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Manually Reverse Engineering Communication Protocols of Linux Based IoT Systems

Liu

Yang

Ling

et al. 2020

Preprint

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IoT security and privacy has raised grave concerns. Efforts have been made to design tools to identify and understand vulnerabilities of IoT systems. Most of the existing protocol security analysis techniques rely on a well understanding of the underlying communication protocols. In this paper, we systematically present the first manual reverse engineering framework for discovering communication protocols of embedded Linux based IoT systems. We have successfully applied our framework to reverse engineer a number of IoT systems. As an example, we present a detailed use of the framework reverse-engineering the WeMo smart plug communication protocol by extracting the firmware from the flash, performing static and dynamic analysis of the firmware and analyzing network traffic. The discovered protocol exposes severe design flaws that allow attackers to control or deny the service of victim plugs. Our manual reverse engineering framework is generic and can be applied to both read-only and writable Embedded Linux filesystems.

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“…Out of the multiple references that we reviewed, the works of Palavicini Jr. et al and Siboni et al nicely overlap with our objectives. On the one hand, Palavicini Jr. et al apply symbolic analysis to vet, in a semiautomated way, Industrial IoT (IIoT) firmware using angr , a UC Santa Barbara binary analysis framework, and Mecanical Phish , a component from the same university's cyber reasoning system, to perform semiautomated analysis of IIoT.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open challenges in vetting the internet‐of‐things

Maamar

Kajan

Asim

et al. 2019

Internet Technology Letters

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Internet‐of‐Thing (IoT) is a rapid‐emerging technology that exploits the concept of internetwork to connect things such as physical devices and objects together. A huge number of things (6.4 billion are in use in 2016) are already acting without direct human control raising a lot of concerns about the readiness and appropriateness of existing security practices, techniques, and tools to secure the data collected and protect people's private lives. As a first step, this paper presses the importance of having a dedicated process for vetting IoT (by analogy to vetting mobile apps) with focus on exposing things' vulnerabilities that could be the primary source of attacks. These vulnerabilities are identified according to things' duties decomposed into sensing, actuating, and communicating. A set of questions shed light on things' vulnerabilities per type of duty.

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Towards Firmware Analysis of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) - Applying Symbolic Analysis to IIoT Firmware Vetting

Cited by 12 publications

References 5 publications

Security Analysis of a Digital Twin Framework Using Probabilistic Model Checking

Security Analysis of a Digital Twin Framework Using Probabilistic Model Checking

On Manually Reverse Engineering Communication Protocols of Linux Based IoT Systems

Open challenges in vetting the internet‐of‐things

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