Alexander Balgavy (Independent), Marius Muench (University of Birmingham)

Embedded devices are a pervasive and at times invisible part of our lives. Due to this pervasiveness, security vulnerabilities may have severe consequences, particularly because many embedded devices are deployed in sensitive applications, such as the industrial, automotive, and medical sectors. Linux-based firmware has already been the subject of extensive research; however, a considerable part of embedded devices do not run Linux. Since current literature mostly focuses on Linux-based firmware, the ecosystem of non-Linux firmware is not well-known.

Therefore, in this paper, we aim to fill this gap in research with FIRMLINE, a pipeline suitable for a large-scale study of nonLinux-based firmware. Using this pipeline, we analyze 21,755 samples, obtained from previous studies and new sources. As part of a security assessment, we also investigate the presence of operating systems and memory protections for a subset of 756 non-Linux ARM samples and find that the majority do not make use of either. Our work will allow for further research of non-Linux firmware, such as refining generic analysis techniques or investigating the OS and deployed security facilities of such firmware in more detail.

View More Papers

Towards Parallel Binary Code Analysis

Xiaozhu Meng (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Read More

Accurate Compiler and Optimization Independent Function Identification Using Program...

Derrick McKee (Purdue University), Nathan Burow (MIT Lincoln Laboratory), Mathias Payer (EPFL)

Read More

Understanding the Internet-Wide Vulnerability Landscape for ROS-based Robotic Vehicles...

Wentao Chen, Sam Der, Yunpeng Luo, Fayzah Alshammari, Qi Alfred Chen (University of California, Irvine)

Read More

SENSE: Enhancing Microarchitectural Awareness for TEEs via Subscription-Based Notification

Fan Sang (Georgia Institute of Technology), Jaehyuk Lee (Georgia Institute of Technology), Xiaokuan Zhang (George Mason University), Meng Xu (University of Waterloo), Scott Constable (Intel), Yuan Xiao (Intel), Michael Steiner (Intel), Mona Vij (Intel), Taesoo Kim (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Read More