SensorLoader: Bridging the Gap in Cyber-Physical Reverse Engineering Across Embedded Peripheral Devices Article Swipe

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AnMei Dasbach-Prisk , Cory Dewitt , Luis Antonio Ribot García ·

YOU? · · 2023 · Open Access · · DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3628356.3630117

Safety-critical cyber-physical systems, such as autonomous vehicles and medical devices, are often driven by notions of state provided by sensor information translated through embedded firmware. This sensor pipeline is often a fragmented supply chain across vendors, and analyzing the associated security properties entails semantic reverse engineering of third-party software, i.e., mapping low-level software representations to cyber-physical models without access to source code. This mapping is a manual, time-consuming, and error-prone process. This paper introduces SensorLoader, a tool designed to automate mapping sensor semantics across all layers of closed-source software representations. SensorLoader exploits open-source knowledge, potentially derived from structured vendor description files or unstructured vendor datasheets, to extract and infer sensor semantics. We leverage large language models to extract sensor semantics from unstructured sources and map the semantics to memory maps and structures used by the Ghidra reverse engineering framework. We formalize the limitations of this automatic extraction and demonstrate how our approach can streamline the reverse engineering process for embedded systems. Preliminary evaluations suggest that SensorLoader can effectively and scalably aid in identifying vulnerabilities and deviations from expected behaviors, offering a more efficient pathway to secure cyber-physical systems.

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Computer science Firmware Reverse engineering Cyber-physical system Vendor Obfuscation Leverage (statistics) Bridging (networking) Exploit Software Semantics (computer science) Embedded software Software engineering Programming language Computer security Artificial intelligence Operating system Marketing Business

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Type: article
Language: en
Landing Page: https://doi.org/10.1145/3628356.3630117
PDF: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3628356.3630117
OA Status: gold
Cited By: 1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3628356.3630117

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Title: SensorLoader: Bridging the Gap in Cyber-Physical Reverse Engineering Across Embedded Peripheral Devices

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Language: en

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Publication year: 2023

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Publication date: 2023-11-12

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Authors: AnMei Dasbach-Prisk, Cory Dewitt, Luis Antonio Ribot García

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Landing page: https://doi.org/10.1145/3628356.3630117

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Concepts: Computer science, Firmware, Reverse engineering, Cyber-physical system, Vendor, Obfuscation, Leverage (statistics), Bridging (networking), Exploit, Software, Semantics (computer science), Embedded software, Software engineering, Programming language, Computer security, Artificial intelligence, Operating system, Marketing, Business

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abstract_inverted_index.description	99
abstract_inverted_index.effectively	167
abstract_inverted_index.engineering	45, 137, 156
abstract_inverted_index.error-prone	69
abstract_inverted_index.evaluations	162
abstract_inverted_index.identifying	172
abstract_inverted_index.information	20
abstract_inverted_index.limitations	142
abstract_inverted_index.open-source	92
abstract_inverted_index.potentially	94
abstract_inverted_index.third-party	47
abstract_inverted_index.SensorLoader	90, 165
abstract_inverted_index.unstructured	102, 121
abstract_inverted_index.SensorLoader,	74
abstract_inverted_index.closed-source	87
abstract_inverted_index.cyber-physical	1, 55, 186
abstract_inverted_index.Safety-critical	0
abstract_inverted_index.representations	53
abstract_inverted_index.time-consuming,	67
abstract_inverted_index.vulnerabilities	173
abstract_inverted_index.representations.	89
cited_by_percentile_year.max	94
cited_by_percentile_year.min	90
countries_distinct_count	1
institutions_distinct_count	3
citation_normalized_percentile.value	0.51019101
citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_1_percent	False
citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent	False