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XOR

A Web Application Framework for Automated Security Analysis of Firmware Images of Embedded Devices

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Smart Industry & Smart Education (REV 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 47))

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Abstract

Embedded Linux devices are very popular today and due their simple implementation they have become ubiquitous in our daily lives. Manufactures provide firmware updates online to enhance software security and quality of their products. In this context, software updates and firmware versions represent an enormous potential for security analysts to perform vulnerability analyses, because no real device is needed to gain valuable insights into systems. Previous solutions show the enormous advantages of automatically performing vulnerability research, but do not correlate program versions with ‘Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures’ (CVE) entries. Our solution provides a remote debugging interface to analyse extracted programs.

Therefore, in this paper we present XOR, an expandable web application framework, which supports the manual reverse engineering process of embedded Linux firmware images. In addition, an internal correlation database offers valuable insights for further research. XOR features detect system services, provides a remote debugging interface and allow the correlation between program version and CVE entries. We analysed 47 firmware images of 20 different vendors and found 487 related CVE entries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.ubnt.com/.

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Correspondence to Klaus Gebeshuber .

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Vorhauer, C., Gebeshuber, K. (2019). XOR. In: Auer, M., Langmann, R. (eds) Smart Industry & Smart Education. REV 2018. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 47. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95678-7_42

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