Authentication in Time-Triggered Systems using Time-delayed Release of Keys

Abstract

This paper investigates on the security of time-triggered transmission channels, which are used to establish a predictable and timely message transfer in a distributed embedded system with potential safety constraints. Within such a system, safety and security are closely related, because malicious attacks can have an impact on a system´s safety and thereby cause severe damage. An attacker could masquerade as an original sender and try to alter some system parameters by injecting malicious messages in the system. In the embedded real-time systems domain particularly the authenticity of data items is of interest, because a lack of integrity can lead to incorrect or erroneous system behavior. In addition, we address the open research question how a common notion of time can contribute to a system´s security. Our solution encompasses an authentication protocol to secure time-triggered transmission channels. We illustrate two attack scenarios (insertion and substitution) that aim at injecting fake messages in such a channel thereby corrupting the internal system state of a receiver. We discuss the feasibility of several key management strategies for embedded systems and describe an authentication protocol using time-delayed release of symmetric keys for time-triggered systems. In a case study we implement the protocol for a prototype Time-Triggered Ethernet (TTE) system. The insight gained from the evaluation is that the computation of the cryptographic algorithms consumes most resources. Our solution shows that authentication can be transparently applied to a time-triggered system exploiting the available global time base and without violating its timeliness properties.