The Desperate Designer and the Embedded System Security

AbstractSince the recent publication of Spectre and Meldown security vulnerabilities, embedded system designers cannot ignore that most of systems are weak-by-design for the security point of view. The most complex the system is, the more failures can be exploited by an attacker in order to compromise the system and the embedded data. Now, the embedded systems designers have to take into account of the security not only on the software point of view but also on the hardware point of view. Face to the numerous threats targeted the embedded systems, the designers could be desperate. Indeed, Spectre and Meldown are not the only security issues of modern processing systems. This special session on embedded system security aims to highlights other threats targeted embedded systems from the cybersecurity level to the hardware. The first paper of this special session from the University of New York will proof that a modular design approach of embedded system can be the origin of vulnerabilities and enable an array of attacks that would disrupt and destabilize the system. A second paper from the Technical University of Munich and the Tallinn University of Technology will show how a MPSoC boot could be targeted by a code injection. A third paper from University of Bretagne Sud and the Information Technology University of Lahore will remind that the share cache-memories remain an efficient target of side channel analysis. Then, a paper from the University of Lyon will presents why the energy management system of modern SoC is a new threat of information leakage. Finally, the last paper from University of Cambridge will illustrate the sensitivity of on-chip/off-chip data storage at the physical attacks (fault injection and side channel analysis). Moreover, despite the numerous security failures presented by the five papers that compose this special session, it is not a desperate situation. Indeed, all the papers present countermeasures, design recommendations and advices to allow the designer’s dream of a secure-by-design embedded system to become possible.