Attacks in Embedded System.
Although I am not an expert in Embedded Security or Cybersecurity, I'm eager to share some insights I gathered in my study of Embedded Security.
As embedded systems increasingly implemented in various sectors and the demand for robust security grows, this post aims to outline common attack that are targeted in any device.
Buffer Overflow Attacks:
Buffer overflow attacks occur when a program writes more data to a buffer than it can hold. This can lead to adjacent memory spaces being overwritten, potentially allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code. Embedded systems often have limited memory resources, making them particularly susceptible to such attacks.
Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks:
DoS attacks aim to make a device or network resource unavailable to its intended users. In the context of embedded systems, this could mean overloading a networked device with traffic, or sending it commands at a rate faster than it can process, causing the system to crash or become unresponsive.
Fault Injection Attacks:
These attacks involve deliberately causing faults in a system to study its responses. These faults can be induced through various means like voltage spikes, temperature variations, or clock glitches. The aim is to cause the system to malfunction in a way that compromises security, such as bypassing a security check or revealing sensitive information.
Side-Channel Attacks:
Side-channel attacks exploit physical implementations of a system rather than weaknesses in the algorithms themselves. These attacks observe patterns in power consumption, electromagnetic leaks, or even sound to extract confidential data, especially cryptographic keys. Examples include Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and Electromagnetic Analysis (EMA) attacks.
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Few more:
Resource Depletion Attacks:
OTA updates typically consume significant network and device resources. An attacker could initiate unnecessary updates or flood the device with update requests, draining its battery or bandwidth, and potentially causing service disruptions.
Replay Attacks:
An attacker captures a legitimate OTA update and replays it at a later time. This can be problematic if the replayed update is an older version with known vulnerabilities, effectively downgrading the device's security.
Do share your views on this concept