2020/01/01 by Solon Falas, Falas, Solon, Charalambos Konstantinou +3
Computer Science · #Advanced Malware Detection Techniques #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security #Security and Verification in Computing
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2007.09071
openalex publication_date 2020/01/01 · openalex created_date 2022/07/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Firmware refers to device read-only resident code which includes microcode\nand macro-instruction -level routines. For Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices\nwithout an operating system, firmware includes all the necessary instructions\non how such embedded systems operate and communicate. Thus, firmware updates\nare an essential part of device functionality. They provide the ability to\npatch vulnerabilities, address operational issues, and improve device\nreliability and performance during the lifetime of the system. This process,\nhowever, is often exploited by attackers in order to inject malicious firmware\ncode into the embedded device. In this paper, we present a framework for secure\nfirmware updates on embedded systems. The approach is based on hardware\nprimitives and cryptographic modules, and it can be deployed in environments\nwhere communication channels might be insecure. The implementation of the\nframework is flexible as it can be adapted in regards to the IoT device's\navailable hardware resources and constraints. Our security analysis shows that\nour framework is resilient to a variety of attack vectors. The experimental\nsetup demonstrates the feasibility of the approach. By implementing a variety\nof test cases on FPGA, we demonstrate the adaptability and performance of the\nframework. Experiments indicate that the update procedure for a 1183kB firmware\nimage could be achieved, in a secure manner, under 1.73 seconds.\n