Firmware Update Research Articles

Firmware Over the Air for Securely Updating ECUs of the Vehicle

Introduction: An automobile is a software-defined machine on top of the wheels including more than 100 electronic control units (ECU) with million lines of code. The integration of ECU in the automobile ensures the customer’s needs by providing safety, security, entertainment, and comfort features. Method: The firmware integrated into the ECU should be updated to avoid latency in operation and bugs, and to add new features. The traditional update process of ECU holds loopholes like more waiting time, unavailability of service centers, and security threats. To overcome this, over-the-air (OTA) updates are introduced in the vehicle, but security is the major concern while transmitting firmware over the air. Result: The proposed system ensures the wireless firmware update with the uptane framework with background Timestamp Update Framework (TUF) ensures the security. The timestamp generated is valid for 86400 seconds to validate the freshness. In addition, security assessment and reverse engineering are performed on the designed system to check for security breaches. Conclusion: The system secures the firmware over arbitrary and replay attacks on the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) server.

Unified Security Framework using Device-Specific Fingerprint: Mitigating Hardware Trojans and Authenticating Firmware Updates

Unified Security Framework using Device-Specific Fingerprint: Mitigating Hardware Trojans and Authenticating Firmware Updates

Identifying risks for effective maintenance of renewable energy plants in the new green Capital City of Indonesia

This study explores the use of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) to identify and mitigate risks in Solar Power Plants (PLTS) in Indonesia’s new National Capital City (IKN). As renewable energy is vital to Indonesia’s sustainability goals, managing risks in PLTS is essential for ensuring reliable and efficient energy production. The research identifies key challenges such as PV Array module failures, shading effects, and control system disruptions, which significantly impact electricity generation. Using the Risk Priority Number (RPN) methodology, the study ranks PV Array modules as the highest risk component (RPN 192), followed by Control and Management Systems (RPN 140) and PV Circuit Breakers and Video Monitoring Systems (RPN 120). These findings underline the need for targeted mitigation strategies. Recommendations include regular PV module inspections, hotspot monitoring technology, firmware updates, and enhanced fire protection systems. Preventive measures like grounding current maintenance and fire sensor upgrades further minimize operational disruptions, ensuring component durability and system efficiency. By leveraging the FMEA framework, this study systematically identifies and prioritizes risks while providing actionable solutions to enhance operational resilience. The results align with Indonesia’s vision of achieving 80 % renewable energy utilization in IKN by 2045. This research offers broader applicability for renewable energy systems in similar contexts, contributing to clean energy initiatives, reducing fossil fuel dependency, and supporting sustainable urban planning. It serves as a critical resource for integrating renewable energy into Indonesia’s green and resilient capital city vision

Enhancing Security of Automotive OTA Firmware Updates via Decentralized Identifiers and Distributed Ledger Technology

The increasing connectivity and complexity of automotive systems require enhanced mechanisms for firmware updates to ensure security and integrity. Traditional methods are insufficient for modern vehicles that require seamless over-the-air (OTA) updates. Current OTA mechanisms often lack robust security measures, leaving vehicles vulnerable to attacks. This paper proposes an innovative approach based on the use of decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for secure OTA firmware updates of on-vehicle software. By utilizing DIDs for unique vehicle identification, as well as verifiable credentials (VCs) and verifiable presentations (VPs) for secure information exchange and verification, the solution ensures the integrity and authenticity of software updates. It also allows for the revocation of specific updates, if necessary, thereby improving overall security. The security analysis applied the STRIDE methodology, which enabled the identification of potential threats, including spoofing, tampering, and privilege escalation. The results showed that our solution effectively mitigates these threats, while a performance evaluation indicated low latency during operations.

DSME-FOTA: Firmware over-the-air update framework for IEEE 802.15.4 DSME MAC to enable large-scale multi-hop industrial IoT networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly expanding in applications ranging from smart homes and smart cities to various other domains, including agriculture, transportation, industrial automation, and environmental monitoring. Regardless of the application domain, firmware update over-the-air (FOTA) capability is critical for any IoT network, and its importance is particularly evident in the field of industrial IoT. This paper presents a comprehensive solution designed for large-scale industrial IoT networks, with a special focus on Deterministic Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME)-based multi-hop networks, called DSME-FOTA. The paper provides a detailed FOTA protocol design, a numerical analysis, and proof-of-concept experiments. The analytical and experimental results show that the total firmware update time of DSME-FOTA exhibits a first-order dependence on both the number of hops and the firmware binary size.

Innovative Firmware Update Method to Microcontrollers during Runtime

This article presents a new firmware update paradigm for optimising the procedure in microcontrollers. The aim is to allow updating during program execution, without interruptions or restarts, replacing only specific code segments. The proposed method uses static and absolute addresses to locate and isolate the code segment to be updated. The work focuses on Microchip’s PIC18F27K42 microcontroller and includes an example of updating functionality without affecting ongoing applications. This approach is ideal for band limited channels, reducing the amount of data transmitted during the update process. It also allows incremental changes to the program code, preserving network capacity, and reduces the costs associated with data transfer, especially in firmware update scenarios using cellular networks. This ability to update the normal operation of the device, avoiding service interruption and minimising downtime, is of remarkable value.

Firmware Updates over the Air via LoRa: Unicast and Broadcast Combination for Boosting Update Speed.

The capacity to update firmware is a vital component in the lifecycle of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, even those with restricted hardware resources. This paper explores the best way to wirelessly (Over The Air, OTA) update low-end IoT nodes with difficult access, combining the use of unicast and broadcast communications. The devices under consideration correspond to a recent industrial IoT project that focuses on the installation of intelligent lighting systems within ATEX (potentially explosive atmospheres) zones, connected via LoRa to a gateway. As energy consumption is not limited in this use case, the main figure of merit is the total time required for updating a project. Therefore, the objective is to deliver all the fragments of the firmware to each and all the nodes in a safe way, in the least amount of time. Three different methods, combining unicast and broadcast transmissions in different ways, are explored analytically, with the aim of obtaining the expected update time. The methods are also tested via extensive simulations, modifying different parameters such as the size of the scenario, the number of bytes of each firmware chunk, the number of nodes, and the number of initial broadcast rounds. The simulations show that the update time of a project can be significant, considering the limitations posed by regulations, in terms of the percentage of airtime consumption. However, significant time reductions can be achieved by using the proper method: in some cases, when the number of nodes is high, the update time can be reduced by two orders of magnitude if the correct method is chosen. Moreover, one of the proposed methods is implemented using actual hardware. This real implementation is used to perform firmware update experiments in a lab environment. Overall, the article illustrates the advantage of broadcast approaches in this kind of technology, in which the transmission rate is constant despite the distance between the gateway and the node. However, the advantage of these broadcast methods with respect to the unicast one could be mitigated if the nodes do not run exactly the same firmware version, since the control of the broadcast update would be more difficult and the total update time would increase.

TPMScan: A wide-scale study of security-relevant properties of TPM 2.0 chips

The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a widely deployed computer component that provides increased protection of key material during cryptographic operations, secure storage, and support for a secure boot with a remotely attestable state of the target machine. A systematic study of the TPM ecosystem, its cryptographic properties, and the orderliness of vulnerability mitigation is missing despite its pervasive deployment – likely due to the black-box nature of the implementations. We collected metadata, RSA and ECC cryptographic keys, and performance characteristics from 78 different TPM versions manufactured by 6 vendors, including recent Pluton-based iTPMs, to systematically analyze TPM implementations.Surprisingly, a high rate of changes with a detectable impact on generated secrets, the timing of cryptographic operations, and frequent off-chip generation of Endorsement Keys were observed. Our analysis of public artifacts for TPM-related products certified under Common Criteria (CC) and FIPS 140 showed relatively high popularity of TPMs but without explanation for these changes in cryptographic implementations. Despite TPMs being commonly certified to CC EAL4+, serious vulnerabilities like ROCA or TPM-Fail were discovered in the past. We found a range of additional unreported nonce leakages in ECDSA, ECSCHNORR, and ECDAA algorithms in dTPMs and fTPMs of three vendors. The most serious discovered leakage allows extraction of the private key of certain Intel’s fTPM versions using only nine signatures with no need for any side-channel information, making the vulnerability retrospectively exploitable despite a subsequent firmware update. Unreported timing leakages were discovered in the implementations of ECC algorithms on multiple Nuvoton TPMs, and other previously reported leakages were confirmed. The analysis also unveiled incompleteness of vulnerability reporting and subsequent mitigation with missing clear information about the affected versions and inconsistent fixes.

Exploring Vulnerabilities and Attack Vectors Targeting Pacemaker Devices in Healthcare

This technical paper investigates the vulnerabilities and potential threats posed by emerging technologies, specifically Bluetoothenabled patient pacemakers. With the advancements in healthcare technology, pacemakers now utilize Bluetooth connectivity for real-time monitoring and data transmission, offering patients and healthcare providers an important convenience. However, this technology also introduces significant security risks, leaving these life-sustaining devices susceptible to malicious attacks. Through an in-depth analysis of existing research, real-life incidents, and vulnerabilities identified by experts in the field, this paper will underscore the critical vulnerabilities present in pacemaker systems. Examples, including findings from researchers such as Billy Rios, Jonathon Butts, and Marie Moe, demonstrate the potential severity of these vulnerabilities. From remote control manipulation to unauthorized access to sensitive medical data, the threats posed by these vulnerabilities are substantial and potentially life-threatening. Moreover, this paper outlines advanced mitigation strategies essential for protecting patient pacemakers against these security risks. Recommendations include end-to-end encryption, whitelist device pairing, intrusion detection systems, and regular firmware updates, highlight the collaborative efforts required from patients, healthcare providers, and manufacturers to mitigate these risks effectively. This paper’s findings underscore the urgent need for robust cybersecurity measures in the design, implementation, and maintenance of pacemaker systems. Addressing these vulnerabilities is key for ensuring patient safety, maintaining privacy, and building trust in healthcare technology. The implications of this research extend beyond pacemaker security, emphasizing the broader importance of cybersecurity in medical devices and the importance of ongoing research and regulatory initiatives to protect patient health.

Security-enhanced firmware management scheme for smart home IoT devices using distributed ledger technologies

With the increase of IoT devices generating large amounts of user-sensitive data, improper firmware harms users’ security and privacy. Latest home appliances are integrated with features to assure compatibility with smart home IoT. However, applying complex security mechanisms to IoT is limited by device hardware capabilities, making them vulnerable to attacks. Such attacks have recently become frequent. To address this issue, we developed a secure verification mechanism for firmware released by the device’s manufacturer. We proposed an IoT gateway for secure firmware verification and updating for smart home IoT devices utilizing the IOTA MAM (Masked Authenticated Messaging) protocol and a distributed file system with IPFS (Inter-Planetary File System) protocol. These two communication protocols ensure decentralized communication and firmware file distribution between the IoT device vendor and the IoT end device. The proposed scheme securely shares latest firmware content over IOTA and IPFS networks, performs a secure firmware update on IoT end devices and ensures authenticity and integrity of the firmware. Two types of validation methods were proposed for firmware updating and validation. We implemented the proposed scheme using three entities, Vendor, IoT gateway, and IoT end device. Our system yielded promising results in performing secure automated firmware updates on IoT end devices with very low computational power. The system’s functionality was implemented using IOTA’s MAM run on Raspberry Pi as an IoT gateway along with an ESP8266 Wi-Fi microcontroller, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach. Our proposed methodology can be used for secure firmware distribution on home IoT applications.

CHALLENGES WITH INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) SECURITY

The phrase "Internet of Things Security" refers to a broad category of tactics, equipment, procedures, frameworks, and techniques utilized to safeguard every facet of the internet of things. The safeguarding of the hardware, software, data, and network connections to guarantee the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of IoT ecosystems is all part of IoT security. There are several security issues due to the large number of vulnerabilities that are frequently found in IoT systems. All aspects of protection, including as component hardening, monitoring, firmware updates, access control, threat response, and vulnerability remediation, are included in robust IoT security. IoT security is essential since these systems are widely dispersed and susceptible to attack, making them a highly focused attack vector. By preventing unwanted access, IoT devices can be protected from becoming entry points into the network and from leaking private data. Vulnerabilities in IoT security can be identified in watches, smart home appliances, cars, and smart grids.

Secure decentralized firmware update delivery service for Internet of Things

With the increasing number of Internet of Things devices, it is crucial to keep them up-to-date to prevent cyber attacks. Traditional centralized delivery is not suitable for scaling and also can be too expensive to run for small vendors. Thus, finding a fully secure, scalable, yet cost-efficient firmware update distribution strategy is always an open research problem. This paper tries to answer those problems by proposing Patchman, a secure decentralized firmware update delivery service for the Internet of Things ecosystem leveraging blockchain. When a new firmware patch is available, vendors make a bid in the smart contract for anyone to join as firmware distributors. For each successful delivery to targeted devices, distributors are rewarded with tokens. Meanwhile, devices gain a reputation score every time they successfully install an update. To ensure robustness and fairness, we develop secure fair exchange protocols using verifiable proof-of-delivery and proof-of-installation. Those proofs can be traded in the blockchain for rewards and reputation scores increase, proving that the proof-holders have successfully processed a firmware delivery and firmware installation task. This way, the firmware update delivery can be executed safely without centralized third-party control. Our evaluation results show that our implementation complies with the five security goals that we envision. We also have successfully punished malicious actions by confiscating their deposits and requiring them to pay up to four times of base deposit value when they join the next update task, ensuring the fairness of our protocol. Furthermore, we generate low processing delay overhead compared to existing works that rely on Zero-Knowledge Proofs. The gas usage consumption from our approach also produced a competitive result despite our works supporting more features than existing works, ensuring the efficiency of our proposal.

MQTree: Secure OTA Protocol Using MQTT and MerkleTree.

The escalating advancement in Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs) necessitates a formidable strategy for firmware updates, where traditional methods often fall short of guaranteeing absolute integrity. Although decentralization has been explored in studies for firmware integrity verification using blockchain technology, it lacks comprehensive validation in the context of automotive over-the-air (OTA) updates. By recognizing the limitations of current practices and the partial validation of decentralized approaches, such as blockchain, in the automotive sector, our study introduces a novel mechanism for firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updates. This mechanism is grounded in the widely adopted message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol, integral to the Internet of Things (IoT) domain, and leverages Merkle tree-based blockchain verification to fortify the fidelity and efficiency of firmware updates. Our proposed solution not only prioritizes the stability crucial to automotive OTA updates but also ensures that performance is not compromised. This dual focus on reliability and efficiency represents a significant stride forward in the development of secure, scalable SDV firmware update protocols.

FLoRa+: Energy-efficient, Reliable, Beamforming-assisted, and Secure Over-the-air Firmware Update in LoRa Networks

The widespread deployment of unattended LoRa networks poses a growing need to perform Firmware Updates Over-The-Air (FUOTA). However, the FUOTA specifications dedicated by LoRa Alliance fall short of several deficiencies with respect to energy efficiency, transmission reliability, multicast fairness, and security. This article proposes FLoRa+ , energy-efficient, reliable, beamforming-assisted, and secure FUOTA for LoRa networks, which is featured with several techniques, including delta scripting, channel coding, beamforming, and securing mechanisms. Specifically, we first propose a joint differencing and compression algorithm to generate the delta script for processing gain, which unlocks the potential of incremental FUOTA in LoRa networks. Then, we design a concatenated channel coding scheme with outer rateless code and inner error detection to enable reliable transmission for coding gain. Afterward, we develop a beamforming strategy to avoid biased multicast and compromised throughput for power gain. Finally, we present a securing mechanism incorporating progressive hash chain and packet arrival time pattern verification to countermeasure firmware integrity and availability attacks for security gain. Experimental results on a 20-node testbed demonstrate that FLoRa+ improves transmission reliability and energy efficiency by up to 1.51× and 2.65× compared with LoRaWAN. Additionally, FLoRa+ can defend against 100% and 85.4% of spoofing and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks.

Over-the-Air Firmware Update in LoRaWAN Networks: A New Module-based Approach

Over the last years, a huge number of things has been connected to the Internet to support applications for smart cities, smart industries, smart agriculture and smart environment, etc. In order to fix bugs, update features or perform dynamic adaptations on these things, Efficient Firmware Update Over the Air (FUOTA) methods are required. In this paper, we propose a modular-based approach for the development of firmware of MCU-based IoT devices, and a new FUOTA method for devices communicating using LoRaWAN. This method enables partial and dynamic updates of modules forming the device firmware, and does not require a system reboot to apply these updates. This approach and this method have been implemented on STM32 MCUs. The experimental results show good performance in terms of update size and network traffic compared to the traditional FUOTA method and monolithic-based firmware development approach, which both impose full firmware updates.

Risks of Using Linux OS with Enabled Firmware Update Mechanism (Linux Vendor Firmware Service)

The article discusses the mechanism for updating the built-in software (firmware) in distributions of the Linux operating system (OS). Considering the import "substitution strategy" in Russia proposed in technology sector and the active transition to this OS, including in solutions related to the digitalization of the energy sector, the problem of additional control over the firmware update process, incl. in used domestic distributions (AstraLinux, AltLinux). At the moment most popular mechanism of automatic firmware update is Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS), article includes brief description of its update process. Using software developed for complete monitoring LVFS metadata were found multiply inconsistencies of current scheme of firmware update — deleting of files from index, replacement of already uploaded images with same id. Also basing on client agent metadata it is possible to organize targeted substitution of binary images transferred by service directly to hardware bypassing built-in monitoring tools. Finally it is concluded that there are potential vulnerabilities in this mechanism and a solution is proposed in the form of organizing own service with additional layer for verification of "firmware" during process of its distribution. If scheme with additional security layer over base of popular and well proved by practice LVFS will be successful it can be used in industrial applications with including in future in appropriate standards as reference model.

Embedded software of the KM3NeT central logic board

The KM3NeT Collaboration is building and operating two deep sea neutrino telescopes at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The telescopes consist of latices of photomultiplier tubes housed in pressure-resistant glass spheres, called digital optical modules and arranged in vertical detection units. The two main scientific goals are the determination of the neutrino mass ordering and the discovery and observation of high-energy neutrino sources in the Universe. Neutrinos are detected via the Cherenkov light, which is induced by charged particles originated in neutrino interactions. The photomultiplier tubes convert the Cherenkov light into electrical signals that are acquired and timestamped by the acquisition electronics. Each optical module houses the acquisition electronics for collecting and timestamping the photomultiplier signals with one nanosecond accuracy. Once finished, the two telescopes will have installed more than six thousand optical acquisition nodes, completing one of the more complex networks in the world in terms of operation and synchronization. The embedded software running in the acquisition nodes has been designed to provide a framework that will operate with different hardware versions and functionalities. The hardware will not be accessible once in operation, which complicates the embedded software architecture. The embedded software provides a set of tools to facilitate remote manageability of the deployed hardware, including safe reconfiguration of the firmware. This paper presents the architecture and the techniques, methods and implementation of the embedded software running in the acquisition nodes of the KM3NeT neutrino telescopes. Program summaryProgram title: Embedded software for the KM3NeT CLBCPC Library link to program files:https://doi.org/10.17632/s847hpsns4.1Licensing provisions: GNU General Public License 3Programming language: CNature of problem: The challenge for the embedded software in the KM3NeT neutrino telescope lies in orchestrating the Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) to achieve the synchronized data acquisition of the incoming optical signals. The DOMs are the crucial component responsible for capturing neutrino interactions deep underwater. The embedded software must configure and precisely time the operation of each DOM. Any deviation or timing mismatch could compromise data integrity, undermining the scientific value of the experiment. Therefore, the embedded software plays a critical role in coordinating, synchronizing, and operating these modules, ensuring they work in unison to capture and process neutrino signals accurately, ultimately advancing our understanding of fundamental particles in the Universe.Solution method: The embedded software on the DOMs provides a solution based on a C-based bare-metal application, operating without a real-time embedded OS. It is loaded into the RAM during FPGA configuration, consuming less than 256 kB of RAM. The software architecture comprises two layers: system software and application. The former offers OS-like features, including a multitasking scheduler, firmware updates, peripheral drivers, a UDP-based network stack, and error handling utilities. The application layer contains a state machine ensuring consistent program states. It is navigated via slow control events, including external inputs and autonomous responses. Subsystems within the application code control specific acquisition electronics components via the associated driver abstractions.Additional comments including restrictions and unusual features: Due to the operation conditions of the neutrino telescope, where access is restricted, the embedded software implements a fail-safe procedure to reconfigure the firmware where the embedded software runs.

IoT 펌웨어 업데이트의 블록체인 적용을 위한 성능 연구 - 플랫폼을 중심으로

IoT 펌웨어 업데이트의 블록체인 적용을 위한 성능 연구 - 플랫폼을 중심으로

Detection of Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) Cyber-Attacks in Oil and Gas Process Control Networks using Machine Learning Algorithms

Recently, the process control network (PCN) of oil and gas installation has been subjected to amorphous cyber-attacks. Examples include the denial-of-service (DoS), distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), and man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, and this may have largely been caused by the integration of open network to operation technology (OT) as a result of low-cost network expansion. The connection of OT to the internet for firmware updates, third-party support, or the intervention of vendors has exposed the industry to attacks. The inability to detect these unpredictable cyber-attacks exposes the PCN, and a successful attack can lead to devastating effects. This paper reviews the different forms of cyber-attacks in PCN of oil and gas installations while proposing the use of machine learning algorithms to monitor data exchanges between the sensors, controllers, processes, and the final control elements on the network to detect anomalies in such data exchanges. Python 3.0 Libraries, Deep-Learning Toolkit, MATLAB, and Allen Bradley RSLogic 5000 PLC Emulator software were used in simulating the process control. The outcomes of the experiments show the reliability and functionality of the different machine learning algorithms in detecting these anomalies with significant precise attack detections identified using tree algorithms (bagged or coarse ) for man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks while taking note of accuracy-computation complexity trade-offs.

Asynchronous network firmware update over the air designed for wireless sensor and actuator networks

This paper improvies the traditional FOTA system to a more robust one named ANFUOTA. This technique is only applicable to systems without embedded operating systems and to microcontrollers without multiple flash memory bank. This novel system is capable of updating the firmware in an asynchronous mode via networks WSN/WSAN kind and furthermore, it guarantees that the system never be without a valid firmware or rather, it is immune of communication failure or loss of packets and even feeding loss, independently of the updating phase. Even during the memory rewriting, in case it happens a feeding failure, the system will begin all over again the recording in the next rebooting. The used technique foresses an updating via networks WSN kind in an asynchronous mode and the firmware can be received in a distributed way in time and in many pieces or capable of being continuous. During this phase, the system remains online and doesn't enter in recording mode, keeping its activity on network. The system guarantees immunity in face of feeding loss and loss of packets by the network in all phases of updating, enabling updating all devices in network, simultaneously.