Security-aware mapping for TDMA-based real-time distributed systems

Abstract

Cyber-security has become a critical issue for real-time distributed embedded systems in domains such as automotive, avionics, and industrial automation. However, in many of such systems, tight resource constraints and strict timing requirements make it difficult or even impossible to add security mechanisms after the initial design stages. To produce secure and safe systems with desired performance, security must be considered together with other objectives at the system level and from the beginning of the design. In this paper, we focus on security-aware design for Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) based real-time distributed systems. The TDMA-based protocol we consider is an abstraction of many time-triggered protocols that are being adopted in various safety-critical systems for their more predictable timing behavior, such as FlexRay, Time-Triggered Protocol, and Time-Triggered Ethernet. To protect against attacks on TDMA-based real-time distributed systems, we apply a message authentication mechanism with time-delayed release of keys, which provides a good balance between security and computational overhead but needs sophisticated network scheduling to ensure that the increased latencies due to delayed key releases will not violate timing requirements. We propose formulations and an algorithm to optimize the task allocation, priority assignment, network scheduling, and key-release interval length during the mapping process, while meeting both security and timing requirements. Experimental results of an automotive case study and a synthetic example show the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.