ProFactory: Improving IoT Security via Formalized Protocol Customization

Authors: 

Fei Wang, Jianliang Wu, and Yuhong Nan, Purdue University; Yousra Aafer, University of Waterloo; Xiangyu Zhang and Dongyan Xu, Purdue University; Mathias Payer, EPFL

Abstract: 

As IoT applications gain widespread adoption, it becomes important to design and implement IoT protocols with security. Existing research in protocol security reveals that the majority of disclosed protocol vulnerabilities are caused by incorrectly implemented message parsing and network state machines. Instead of testing and fixing those bugs after development, which is extremely expensive, we would like to avert them upfront. For this purpose, we propose ProFactory which formally and unambiguously models a protocol, checks model correctness, and generates a secure protocol implementation. We leverage ProFactory to generate a group of IoT protocols in the Bluetooth and Zigbee families and the evaluation demonstrates that 82 known vulnerabilities are averted. ProFactory will be publicly available.

Open Access Media

USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.

BibTeX
@inproceedings {277208,
author = {Fei Wang and Jianliang Wu and Yuhong Nan and Yousra Aafer and Xiangyu Zhang and Dongyan Xu and Mathias Payer},
title = {{ProFactory}: Improving {IoT} Security via Formalized Protocol Customization},
booktitle = {31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 22)},
year = {2022},
isbn = {978-1-939133-31-1},
address = {Boston, MA},
pages = {3879--3896},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity22/presentation/wang-fei},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}

Presentation Video