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Integrating Security Concerns into Safety Analysis of Embedded Systems Using Component Fault Trees (2016)

Max Steiner

Nowadays, almost every newly developed system contains embedded systems for controlling system functions. An embedded system perceives its environment via sensors, and interacts with it using actuators such as motors. For systems that might damage their environment by faulty behavior usually a safety analysis is performed. Security properties of embedded systems are usually not analyzed at all. New developments in the area of Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things lead to more and more networking of embedded systems. Thereby, new causes for system failures emerge: Vulnerabilities in software and communication components might be exploited by attackers to obtain control over a system. By targeted actions a system may also be brought into a critical state in which it might harm itself or its environment. Examples for such vulnerabilities, and also successful attacks, became known over the last few years. For this reason, in embedded systems safety as well as security has to be analyzed at least as far as it may cause safety critical failures of system components. The goal of this thesis is to describe in one model how vulnerabilities from the security point of view might influence the safety of a system. The focus lies on safety analysis of systems, so the safety analysis is extended to encompass security problems that may have an effect on the safety of a system. Component Fault Trees are very well suited to examine causes of a failure and to find failure scenarios composed of combinations of faults. A Component Fault Tree of an analyzed system is extended by additional Basic Events that may be caused by targeted attacks. Qualitative and quantitative analyses are extended to take the additional security events into account. Thereby, causes of failures that are based on safety as well as security problems may be found. Quantitative or at least semi-quantitative analyses allow to evaluate security measures more detailed, and to justify the need of such. The approach was applied to several example systems: The safety chain of the off-road robot RAVON, an adaptive cruise control, a smart farming scenario, and a model of a generic infusion pump were analyzed. The result of all example analyses was that additional failure causes were found which would not have been detected in traditional Component Fault Trees. In the analyses also failure scenarios were found that are caused solely by attacks, and that are not depending on failures of system components. These are especially critical scenarios which should not happen in this way, as they are not found in a classical safety analysis. Thus the approach shows its additional benefit to a safety analysis which is achieved by the application of established techniques with only little additional effort.

Worst-Case Performance Analysis of Feed-Forward Networks – An Efficient and Accurate Network Calculus (2016)

Steffen Bondorf

Distributed systems are omnipresent nowadays and networking them is fundamental for the continuous dissemination and thus availability of data. Provision of data in real-time is one of the most important non-functional aspects that safety-critical networks must guarantee. Formal verification of data communication against worst-case deadline requirements is key to certification of emerging x-by-wire systems. Verification allows aircraft to take off, cars to steer by wire, and safety-critical industrial facilities to operate. Therefore, different methodologies for worst-case modeling and analysis of real-time systems have been established. Among them is deterministic Network Calculus (NC), a versatile technique that is applicable across multiple domains such as packet switching, task scheduling, system on chip, software-defined networking, data center networking and network virtualization. NC is a methodology to derive deterministic bounds on two crucial performance metrics of communication systems: (a) the end-to-end delay data flows experience and (b) the buffer space required by a server to queue all incoming data. NC has already seen application in the industry, for instance, basic results have been used to certify the backbone network of the Airbus A380 aircraft. The NC methodology for worst-case performance analysis of distributed real-time systems consists of two branches. Both share the NC network model but diverge regarding their respective derivation of performance bounds, i.e., their analysis principle. NC was created as a deterministic system theory for queueing analysis and its operations were later cast in a (min,+)-algebraic framework. This branch is known as algebraic Network Calculus (algNC). While algNC can efficiently compute bounds on delay and backlog, the algebraic manipulations do not allow NC to attain the most accurate bounds achievable for the given network model. These tight performance bounds can only be attained with the other, newly established branch of NC, the optimization-based analysis (optNC). However, the only optNC analysis that can currently derive tight bounds was proven to be computationally infeasible even for the analysis of moderately sized networks other than simple sequences of servers. This thesis makes various contributions in the area of algNC: accuracy within the existing framework is improved, distributivity of the sensor network calculus analysis is established, and most significantly the algNC is extended with optimization principles. They allow algNC to derive performance bounds that are competitive with optNC. Moreover, the computational efficiency of the new NC approach is improved such that this thesis presents the first NC analysis that is both accurate and computationally feasible at the same time. It allows NC to scale to larger, more complex systems that require formal verification of their real-time capabilities.

Assuring Functional Safety in Open Systems of Systems (2016)

Mario Trapp

Interconnected, autonomously driving cars shall realize the vision of a zero-accident, low energy mobility in spite of a fast increasing traffic volume. Tightly interconnected medical devices and health care systems shall ensure the health of an aging society. And interconnected virtual power plants based on renewable energy sources shall ensure a clean energy supply in a society that consumes more energy than ever before. Such open systems of systems will play an essential role for economy and society. Open systems of systems dynamically connect to each other in order to collectively provide a superordinate functionality, which could not be provided by a single system alone. The structure as well as the behavior of an open system of system dynamically emerge at runtime leading to very flexible solutions working under various different environmental conditions. This flexibility and adaptivity of systems of systems are a key for realizing the above mentioned scenarios. On the other hand, however, this leads to uncertainties since the emerging structure and behavior of a system of system can hardly be anticipated at design time. This impedes the indispensable safety assessment of such systems in safety-critical application domains. Existing safety assurance approaches presume that a system is completely specified and configured prior to a safety assessment. Therefore, they cannot be applied to open systems of systems. In consequence, safety assurance of open systems of systems could easily become a bottleneck impeding or even preventing the success of this promising new generation of embedded systems. For this reason, this thesis introduces an approach for the safety assurance of open systems of systems. To this end, we shift parts of the safety assurance lifecycle into runtime in order to dynamically assess the safety of the emerging system of system. We use so-called safety models at runtime for enabling systems to assess the safety of an emerging system of system themselves. This leads to a very flexible runtime safety assurance framework. To this end, this thesis describes the fundamental knowledge on safety assurance and model-driven development, which are the indispensable prerequisites for defining safety models at runtime. Based on these fundamentals, we illustrate how we modularized and formalized conventional safety assurance techniques using model-based representations and analyses. Finally, we explain how we advanced these design time safety models to safety models that can be used by the systems themselves at runtime and how we use these safety models at runtime to create an efficient and flexible runtime safety assurance framework for open systems of systems.

Interactive Visualizations Supporting Minimal Cut Set Analysis II (2016)

Yasmin Al-Zokari

The Context and Its Importance: In safety and reliability analysis, the information generated by Minimal Cut Set (MCS) analysis is large. The Top Level event (TLE) that is the root of the fault tree (FT) represents a hazardous state of the system being analyzed. MCS analysis helps in analyzing the fault tree (FT) qualitatively-and quantitatively when accompanied with quantitative measures. The information shows the bottlenecks in the fault tree design leading to identifying weaknesses of the system being examined. Safety analysis (containing the MCS analysis) is especially important for critical systems, where harm can be done to the environment or human causing injuries, or even death during the system usage. Minimal Cut Set (MCS) analysis is performed using computers and generating a lot of information. This phase is called MCS analysis I in this thesis. The information is then analyzed by the analysts to determine possible issues and to improve the design of the system regarding its safety as early as possible. This phase is called MCS analysis II in this thesis. The goal of my thesis was developing interactive visualizations to support MCS analysis II of one fault tree (FT). The Methodology: As safety visualization-in this thesis, Minimal Cut Set analysis II visualization-is an emerging field and no complete checklist regarding Minimal Cut Set analysis II requirements and gaps were available from the perspective of visualization and interaction capabilities, I have conducted multiple studies using different methods with different data sources (i.e., triangulation of methods and data) for determining these requirements and gaps before developing and evaluating visualizations and interactions supporting Minimal Cut Set analysis II. Thus, the following approach was taken in my thesis: 1- First, a triangulation of mixed methods and data sources was conducted. 2- Then, four novel interactive visualizations and one novel interaction widget were developed. 3- Finally, these interactive visualizations were evaluated both objectively and subjectively (compared to multiple safety tools) from the point of view of users and developers of the safety tools that perform MCS analysis I with respect to their degree in supporting MCS analysis II and from the point of non-domain people using empirical strategies. The Spiral tool supports analysts with different visions, i.e., full vision, color deficiency protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia. It supports 100 out of 103 (97%) requirements obtained from the triangulation and it fills 37 out of 39 (95%) gaps. Its usability was rated high (better than their best currently used tools) by the users of the safety and reliability tools (RiskSpectrum, ESSaRel, FaultTree+, and a self-developed tool) and at least similar to the best currently used tools from the point of view of the CAFTA tool developers. Its quality was higher regarding its degree of supporting MCS analysis II compared to the FaultTree+ tool. The time spent for discovering the critical MCSs from a problem size of 540 MCSs (with a worst case of all equal order) was less than a minute while achieving 99.5% accuracy. The scalability of the Spiral visualization was above 4000 MCSs for a comparison task. The Dynamic Slider reduces the interaction movements up to 85.71% of the previous sliders and solves the overlapping thumb issues by the sliders provides the 3D model view of the system being analyzed provides the ability to change the coloring of MCSs according to the color vision of the user provides selecting a BE (i.e., multi-selection of MCSs), thus, can observe the BEs' NoO and provides its quality provides two interaction speeds for panning and zooming in the MCS, BE, and model views provide a MCS, a BE, and a physical tab for supporting the analysis starting by the MCSs, the BEs, or the physical parts. It combines MCS analysis results and the model of an embedded system enabling the analysts to directly relate safety information with the corresponding parts of the system being analyzed and provides an interactive mapping between the textual information of the BEs and MCSs and the parts related to the BEs. Verifications and Assessments: I have evaluated all visualizations and the interaction widget both objectively and subjectively, and finally evaluated the final Spiral visualization tool also both objectively and subjectively regarding its perceived quality and regarding its degree of supporting MCS analysis II.

Verification & Performance Measurement for Transport Protocol Parallel Routing of an AUTOSAR Gateway System (2016)

Hassan Mohammad

A wide range of methods and techniques have been developed over the years to manage the increasing complexity of automotive Electrical/Electronic systems. Standardization is an example of such complexity managing techniques that aims to minimize the costs, avoid compatibility problems and improve the efficiency of development processes. A well-known and -practiced standard in automotive industry is AUTOSAR (Automotive Open System Architecture). AUTOSAR is a common standard among OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer), suppliers and other involved companies. It was developed originally with the goal of simplifying the overall development and integration process of Electrical/Electronic artifacts from different functional domains, such as hardware, software, and vehicle communication. However, the AUTOSAR standard, in its current status, is not able to manage the problems in some areas of the system development. Validation and optimization process of system configuration handled in this thesis are examples of such areas, in which the AUTOSAR standard offers so far no mature solutions. Generally, systems developed on the basis of AUTOSAR must be configured in a way that all defined requirements are met. In most cases, the number of configuration parameters and their possible settings in AUTOSAR systems are large, especially if the developed system is complex with modules from various knowledge domains. The verification process here can consume a lot of resources to test all possible combinations of configuration settings, and ideally find the optimal configuration variant, since the number of test cases can be very high. This problem is referred to in literature as the combinatorial explosion problem. Combinatorial testing is an active and promising area of functional testing that offers ideas to solve the combinatorial explosion problem. Thereby, the focus is to cover the interaction errors by selecting a sample of system input parameters or configuration settings for test case generation. However, the industrial acceptance of combinatorial testing is still weak because of the deficiency of real industrial examples. This thesis is tempted to fill this gap between the industry and the academy in the area of combinatorial testing to emphasizes the effectiveness of combinatorial testing in verifying complex configurable systems. The particular intention of the thesis is to provide a new applicable approach to combinatorial testing to fight the combinatorial explosion problem emerged during the verification and performance measurement of transport protocol parallel routing of an AUTOSAR gateway. The proposed approach has been validated and evaluated by means of two real industrial examples of AUTOSAR gateways with multiple communication buses and two different degrees of complexity to illustrate its applicability.

Model-based Design of Embedded Systems by Desynchronization (2016)

Yu Bai

In this thesis we developed a desynchronization design flow in the goal of easing the de- velopment effort of distributed embedded systems. The starting point of this design flow is a network of synchronous components. By transforming this synchronous network into a dataflow process network (DPN), we ensures important properties that are difficult or theoretically impossible to analyze directly on DPNs are preserved by construction. In particular, both deadlock-freeness and buffer boundedness can be preserved after desyn- chronization. For the correctness of desynchronization, we developed a criteria consisting of two properties: a global property that demands the correctness of the synchronous network, as well as a local property that requires the latency-insensitivity of each local synchronous component. As the global property is also a correctness requirement of synchronous systems in general, we take this property as an assumption of our desyn- chronization. However, the local property is in general not satisfied by all synchronous components, and therefore needs to be verified before desynchronization. In this thesis we developed a novel technique for the verification of the local property that can be carried out very efficiently. Finally we developed a model transformation method that translates a set of synchronous guarded actions – an intermediate format for synchronous systems – to an asynchronous actor description language (CAL). Our theorem ensures that one passed the correctness verification, the generated DPN of asynchronous pro- cesses (or actors) preserves the functional behavior of the original synchronous network. Moreover, by the correctness of the synchronous network, our theorem guarantees that the derived DPN is deadlock-free and can be implemented with only finitely bounded buffers.

Monoids as Storage Mechanisms (2016)

Georg Zetzsche

Automata theory has given rise to a variety of automata models that consist of a finite-state control and an infinite-state storage mechanism. The aim of this work is to provide insights into how the structure of the storage mechanism influences the expressiveness and the analyzability of the resulting model. To this end, it presents generalizations of results about individual storage mechanisms to larger classes. These generalizations characterize those storage mechanisms for which the given result remains true and for which it fails. In order to speak of classes of storage mechanisms, we need an overarching framework that accommodates each of the concrete storage mechanisms we wish to address. Such a framework is provided by the model of valence automata, in which the storage mechanism is represented by a monoid. Since the monoid serves as a parameter to specifying the storage mechanism, our aim translates into the question: For which monoids does the given (automata-theoretic) result hold? As a first result, we present an algebraic characterization of those monoids over which valence automata accept only regular languages. In addition, it turns out that for each monoid, this is the case if and only if valence grammars, an analogous grammar model, can generate only context-free languages. Furthermore, we are concerned with closure properties: We study which monoids result in a Boolean closed language class. For every language class that is closed under rational transductions (in particular, those induced by valence automata), we show: If the class is Boolean closed and contains any non-regular language, then it already includes the whole arithmetical hierarchy. This work also introduces the class of graph monoids, which are defined by finite graphs. By choosing appropriate graphs, one can realize a number of prominent storage mechanisms, but also combinations and variants thereof. Examples are pushdowns, counters, and Turing tapes. We can therefore relate the structure of the graphs to computational properties of the resulting storage mechanisms. In the case of graph monoids, we study (i) the decidability of the emptiness problem, (ii) which storage mechanisms guarantee semilinear Parikh images, (iii) when silent transitions (i.e. those that read no input) can be avoided, and (iv) which storage mechanisms permit the computation of downward closures.

Towards A Non-tracking Web (2016)

Istemi Ekin Akkus

Today, many publishers (e.g., websites, mobile application developers) commonly use third-party analytics services and social widgets. Unfortunately, this scheme allows these third parties to track individual users across the web, creating privacy concerns and leading to reactions to prevent tracking via blocking, legislation and standards. While improving user privacy, these efforts do not consider the functionality third-party tracking enables publishers to use: to obtain aggregate statistics about their users and increase their exposure to other users via online social networks. Simply preventing third-party tracking without replacing the functionality it provides cannot be a viable solution; leaving publishers without essential services will hurt the sustainability of the entire ecosystem. In this thesis, we present alternative approaches to bridge this gap between privacy for users and functionality for publishers and other entities. We first propose a general and interaction-based third-party cookie policy that prevents third-party tracking via cookies, yet enables social networking features for users when wanted, and does not interfere with non-tracking services for analytics and advertisements. We then present a system that enables publishers to obtain rich web analytics information (e.g., user demographics, other sites visited) without tracking the users across the web. While this system requires no new organizational players and is practical to deploy, it necessitates the publishers to pre-define answer values for the queries, which may not be feasible for many analytics scenarios (e.g., search phrases used, free-text photo labels). Our second system complements the first system by enabling publishers to discover previously unknown string values to be used as potential answers in a privacy-preserving fashion and with low computation overhead for clients as well as servers. These systems suggest that it is possible to provide non-tracking services with (at least) the same functionality as today’s tracking services.

Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of CFTs Taking Security Causes into Account (2015)

Max Steiner Peter Liggesmeyer

Component fault trees that contain safety basic events as well as security basic events cannot be analyzed like normal CFTs. Safety basic events are rated with probabilities in an interval [0,1], for security basic events simpler scales such as \{low, medium, high\} make more sense. In this paper an approach is described how to handle a quantitative safety analysis with different rating schemes for safety and security basic events. By doing so, it is possible to take security causes for safety failures into account and to rate their effect on system safety.

Combination of Safety and Security Analysis - Finding Security Problems That Threaten the Safety of a System (2013)

Max Steiner Peter Liggesmeyer

In most cases in a safety analysis the influences of security problems are omitted or even forgotten. Because more and more systems are accessible from outside the system via maintenance interfaces, this missing security analysis is becoming a problem. This is why we propose an approach on how to extend the safety analysis by security aspects. Such a more comprehensive analysis should lead to systems that react in less catastrophic ways to attacks.

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