Biblio

In this work a platform-aware model-driven engineering process for building component-based embedded software systems using annotated analysis models is described. The process is supported by a framework, called MICOBS, that allows working with different component technologies and integrating different tools that, independently of the component technology, enable the analysis of non-functional properties based on the principles of composability and compositionality. An actor, called Framework Architect, is responsible for this integration. Three other actors take a relevant part in the analysis process. The Component Provider supplies the components, while the Component Tester is in charge of their validation. The latter also feeds MICOBS with the annotated analysis models that characterize the extra-functional properties of the components for the different platforms on which they can be deployed. The Application Architect uses these components to build new systems, performing the trade-off between different alternatives. At this stage, and in order to verify that the final system meets the extra-functional requirements, the Application Architect uses the reports generated by the integrated analysis tools. This process has been used to support the validation and verification of the on-board application software for the Instrument Control Unit of the Energetic Particle Detector of the Solar Orbiter mission.

With the rapid deployment of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), security has become a more critical problem than ever before, as such devices are interconnected and have access to a broad range of critical data. A well-known attack is ReturnOriented Programming (ROP) which can diverge the control flow of a program by exploiting the buffer overflow vulnerability. To protect a program from ROP attacks, a useful method is to instrument code into the protected program to do runtime control flow checking (known as Control Flow Integrity, CFI). However, instrumented code brings extra execution time, which has to be properly handled, as most CPS systems need to behave in a real-time manner. In this paper, we present a technique to efficiently compute an execution plan, which maximizes the number of executions of instrumented code to achieve maximal defense effect, and at the same time guarantees real-time schedulability of the protected task system with a new response time analysis. Simulation-based experimental results show that the proposed method can yield good quality execution plans, but performs orders of magnitude faster than exhaustive search. We also built a prototype in which a small auto-drive car is defended against ROP attacks by the proposed method implemented in FreeRTOS. The prototype demonstrates the effectiveness of our method in real-life scenarios.