Critical systems such as drone control or power grid control applications rely on embedded devices capable of a real-time response. While much research and advancements have been made to implement ...low-latency and real-time characteristics, the security aspect has been left aside. All current real-time operating systems available for industrial embedded devices are implemented in the C programming language, which makes them prone to memory safety issues. As a response to this, Tock, an innovative secure operating system for embedded devices written completely in Rust, has recently appeared. The only downside of Tock is that it lacks the low-latency real-time component. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to leverage the extended Berkeley Packet Filter technology used for efficient network traffic processing and to add the low-latency capability to Tock. The result is a secure low-latency operating system for embedded devices and microcontrollers capable of handling interrupts at latencies as low as 60 µs.
Internet of Things (IoT) systems deployments are becoming both ubiquitous and business critical in numerous business verticals, both for process automation and data-driven decision-making based on ...distributed sensors networks. Beneath the simplicity offered by these solutions, we usually find complex, multi-layer architectures—from hardware sensors up to data analytics systems. These rely heavily on software running on the on-location gateway devices designed to bridge the communication between the sensors and the cloud. This will generally require updates and improvements—raising deployment and maintenance challenges. Especially for large scale commercial solutions, a secure and fail-safe updating system becomes crucial for a successful IoT deployment. This paper explores the specific challenges for infrastructures dedicated to remote application deployment and management, addresses the management challenges related to IoT sensors systems, and proposes a mathematical model and a methodology for tackling this. To test the model’s efficiency, we implemented it as a software infrastructure system for complete commercial IoT products. As proof, we present the deployment of 100 smart soda dispensing machines in three locations. Each machine relies on sensors monitoring its status and on gateways controlling its behaviour, each receiving 133 different remote software updates through our solution. In addition, 80% of the machines ran non-interrupted for 250 days, with 20% failing due to external factors; out of the 80%, 30% experienced temporary update failures due to reduced hardware capabilities and the system successfully performed automatic rollback of the system, thus recovering in 100% of the temporary failures.
The adoption of Internet of Things in commercial and industrial systems exposes products to a new set of security issues, as what used to be isolated devices are now connected to the Internet. In ...this context, the need for updates infrastructures dedicated to IoT becomes crucial in maintaining security. The aim of this paper is to analyze the challenges and the characteristics specific to IoT deploy and update solutions with a focus on the security aspect. We extract the main characteristics that make such an infrastructure secure and propose them as pillars for any Internet of Things-specific deploy system.
The Internet of Things is a thriving field in which multiple open source tools are used. On the other hand, Windows 10 Iot Core, a closed source operating system designed with Internet of Things in ...mind, shows great potential. This paper presents the main platforms required for expanding open source development tools for this operating system, as well as the process of expanding an open source IDE to a Qualcomm board running Windows 10 IoT Core.
Nowadays a major part of the industry is shifting towards the Internet of Things, which implies building systems based on multiple interconnected embedded devices. Due to this, there is a need of ...engineers who are able to design such systems, enable the communication between the devices, build and deploy applications. As a result, more and more educational institutions are working on introducing IoT classes in their curricula. However, while there are plenty of hardware platforms especially designed for education, there is a lack of software educational tools in this area. This paper describes the needs we identified while teaching Internet of Things classes and how we solved the encountered issues by building an open source educational platform for the IoT. We have started teaching IoT four years ago, when there were hardly any development tools in this direction, so building even the simplest IoT device required networking knowledge and a complex setup process before getting to actually build the system. This was because students had to identify the embedded board connected to the network, connect to it and start working on the application. Apart from this, we also faced the issue of making students rely solely on terminal command and unintuitive text editors such as vim for writing the applications. All these challenges made students reluctant to the whole Internet of Things idea and usually IoT classes defaulted to simple electronics classes where Arduino made development and programming easy. Our first solution was to build a cloud platform that would allow students to program the IoT systems from a web interface, making it more intuitive and user friendly. However, by being cloud based, the platform was unreliable when the Internet connection was inconsistent and it also brought some privacy issues. The optimal solution was to build an open source platform, Wyliodrin STUDIO, that would come as a Chrome application. The platform allows students to easily connect to the embedded devices and deploy applications they write in an intuitive interface. Wyliodrin STUDIO scans the network for the available devices and displays them to the students who can connect to any of them. Afterwards, the students can write applications in multiple programming languages, even visuals ones, in a web editor and with a click of a button, the applications gets deployed on the board. This simple process allowed us to focus on the electronics and programming part specific to the IoT, rather than on the setup. This made the teaching and learning experience more fluid and efficient.
Teaching Computer Engineering Concepts to Non-Technical Students CULIC, Ioana; Radovici, Alexandru; VĂDUVA, Jan-Alexandru
The International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education,
2019, 20190101, Letnik:
15, Številka:
1
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Odprti dostop
Currently, most of the work fields benefit from the use of computers and from various ways to automatize many of the existing tasks. The result is that many various fields of study have introduced ...computer science classes in their curriculum, from electrical engineering to civil engineering or architecture. One of the issues these universities have is that it is difficult for the students to understand the computer science concepts and to make the connection between these theoretical notions and their field of study. In this paper we propose an approach that allows instructors and professors to introduce computer science notions to students having non-computer science background, such as electrical engineering or even fine arts students. Our solution is an open-source platform that consist of both a hardware and a software component which work together to enable students to build applications related to their field of study. The platform we suggest is a Raspberry Pi extension board which allows students to read data from or control peripherals such as solar panels, LEDs, temperature sensors, etc. On top of the platform instructors can place physical elements, such as houses or traffic lights structures, making the process more interactive and more intuitive. The platform can be controlled through an interface that allows programming in a visual way, generating Python code that the students can analyse.
ADREM: System Call Based Intrusion Detection Framework VĂDUVA, Jan-Alexandru; CHIȘCARIU, Radu-Emanuel; CULIC, Ioana ...
The International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education,
2019, 20190101, Letnik:
15, Številka:
1
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Odprti dostop
We are living in an era where computers govern the educational process. The market is flooded with puzzles, games, quizzes or other kinds of applications destined to help teachers explain different ...concepts and to enable students to practice their skills and test the knowledge. For all these systems, be them computers, server or embedded devices, the internet connection is the essential aspect. As a result, we have children and students working with devices that are exposed to the highest degree of security issues and threats. Attacks are continuously evolving, becoming more flexible, adaptable and hard to detect, and leaving children and students vulnerable to malicious software that can either collect sensitive information about them or expose them to inappropriate content. Because of this, it is only natural that security solutions became of significant importance for the tech educational industry. Computers, servers and embedded devices are exposed to the highest degree of security issues and threats since the internet became an essential need. Attacks are continuously evolving, becoming more flexible, adaptable and hard to detect. This made only natural the shift towards adaptive security oriented solutions. One of the security those solutions is represented by anomaly based intrusion detection techniques. Anomaly based intrusion detection systems build a baseline of normal behavior. For a Linux based operating system, which represents a great percent of the platforms used in education, this is accomplished by monitoring a given process or sets of processes. Any significant deviation from the baseline model is flagged as malicious activity. This paper proposes a framework for intrusion detection using system call traces captured from services running on a container. The work done is based on The Australian Defence Force Academy Linux Dataset, better known as ADFA-LD. The analysis is done taking into consideration the temporal allocation of the system calls. The classification module is based on supervised machine learning techniques. To test the accuracy of the framework, a case study involving a database application running under a Linux container is analyzed. The results together with the proposed framework implementation are described in details.
Multi-Layer Security Framework for IoT Devices Vochescu, Alexandru; Culic, Ioana; Radovici, Alexandru
2020 19th RoEduNet Conference: Networking in Education and Research (RoEduNet),
2020-Dec.-11
Conference Proceeding
One of the most engaging domains in the IT technology is represented by the Internet of Things (loT) area. IoT solution are more and more present in our lives: from the daily-use devices such as ...smart watches or rings, to more peculiar applications such as smart tables or smart home fragrances. As a result of this development, IoT technologies can become intrusive as they have access to a lot of our personal data and are able to control an increasing number of aspects of our lives. As a result, IoT is currently viewed by many individuals and companies from a security issue perspective. Many of the security threats related to the IoT technologies come from the way software and applications are implemented or from the programming frameworks used. What is more, as the applications become increasingly complex and the hardware devices increasingly constrained, many security mechanisms cannot be applied. The purpose of this paper is to present a multi-layer secure framework dedicated to hardware-constrained devices.
Nowadays the Internet of Things (IoT) is not a novel and ambiguous phrase anymore. As IoT technologies such as smartwatches improve the quality of everyday living, people gradually rely more and more ...on connected devices. However, despite the exponential increase in popularity, the technologies used for connecting everyday devices and embedded computers to the Internet are still limited. While the range of programming languages and runtimes for web and desktop applications becomes wider, IoT development tools lack in diversity. In this context, this paper aims to adapt a new and popular programming language to be used for building Internet of Things applications. D is an accessible and widely used programming language, which is not currently designed to be used within the IoT domain. By adapting D to run on constrained devices, we desire to make IoT prototyping more accessible.
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