arXiv subjects

Jorge Guajardo

Publications and source records attributed to Jorge Guajardo.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Patchlings: Safety-Preserving Flash-Based Hotpatching for Automotive Microcontrollers

The increasing presence of software in modern automobiles has created a growing need to deliver software updates throughout a vehicle's entire lifespan. Traditional update methods are slow and require months of re-validation to comply with stringent safety standards like ISO 26262. Although hotpatching offers a path to faster updates, existing solutions for real-time embedded systems are unsuitable for the automotive domain: they overlook regulatory compliance, demand extensive safety validation, and lack support for the flash-based Execute-in-Place (XIP) architecture commonly used in automotive electronic control units (ECUs). We introduce Patchlings, the first hotpatching framework designed for compliance, safety, and persistence in automotive systems. It fills the gap in applying hotpatching to automotive systems and fundamentally reduces the mean-time-to-mitigate (MTTM) for vulnerabilities and bugs. We implement and evaluate a complete prototype of Patchlings on an automotive-grade hardware platform, NXP S32K148EVB, with both FreeRTOS and Zephyr. Our results demonstrate low and deterministic overhead (e.g., 3.3 $\mu$s when a patch is applied), small firmware size increase (e.g., as low as 6.34%), and successful patching of different types of real CVEs, proving its real-world applicability and effectiveness.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

Privacy-Preserving Verifiable Neural Network Inference Service

Machine learning has revolutionized data analysis and pattern recognition, but its resource-intensive training has limited accessibility. Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) simplifies this by enabling users to delegate their data samples to an MLaaS provider and obtain the inference result using a pre-trained model. Despite its convenience, leveraging MLaaS poses significant privacy and reliability concerns to the client. Specifically, sensitive information from the client inquiry data can be leaked to an adversarial MLaaS provider. Meanwhile, the lack of a verifiability guarantee can potentially result in biased inference results or even unfair payment issues. While existing trustworthy machine learning techniques, such as those relying on verifiable computation or secure computation, offer solutions to privacy and reliability concerns, they fall short of simultaneously protecting the privacy of client data and providing provable inference verifiability. In this paper, we propose vPIN, a privacy-preserving and verifiable CNN inference scheme that preserves privacy for client data samples while ensuring verifiability for the inference. vPIN makes use of partial homomorphic encryption and commit-and-prove succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge techniques to achieve desirable security properties. In vPIN, we develop various optimization techniques to minimize the proving circuit for homomorphic inference evaluation thereby, improving the efficiency and performance of our technique. We fully implemented and evaluated our vPIN scheme on standard datasets (e.g., MNIST, CIFAR-10). Our experimental results show that vPIN achieves high efficiency in terms of proving time, verification time, and proof size, while providing client data privacy guarantees and provable verifiability.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

Towards a New Configurable and Practical Remote Automotive Security Testing Platform

In the automotive security sector, the absence of a testing platform that is configurable, practical, and user-friendly presents considerable challenges. These difficulties are compounded by the intricate design of vehicle systems, the rapid evolution of attack vectors, and the absence of standardized testing methodologies. We propose a next-generation testing platform that addresses several challenges in vehicle cybersecurity testing and research domains. In this paper, we detail how the Vehicle Security Engineering Cloud (VSEC) Test platform enables easier access to test beds for efficient vehicle cybersecurity testing and advanced (e.g., penetration, fuzz) testing and how we extend such test beds to benefit automotive security research. We highlight methodology on how to use this platform for a variety of users and use cases with real implemented examples.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2020

Grand Challenges for Embedded Security Research in a Connected World

Protecting embedded security is becoming an increasingly challenging research problem for embedded systems due to a number of emerging trends in hardware, software, networks, and applications. Without fundamental advances in, and an understanding of embedded security it will be difficult for future engineers to provide assurance for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT) in wide ranging applications, from home automation and autonomous transportation to medical devices and factory floors. Common to such applications are cyberphysical risks and consequences stemming from a lack of embedded security. The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) held a one-day visioning workshop to explore these issues. The workshop focused on five major application areas of embedded systems, namely (1) medical/wearable devices, (2) autonomous systems (drones, vehicles, robots), (3) smart homes, (4) industry and supply chain, and (5) critical infrastructure. This report synthesizes the results of that workshop and develops a list of strategic goals for research and education over the next 5-10 years. Embedded security in connected devices presents challenges that require a broad look at the overall systems design, including human and societal dimensions as well as technical. Particular issues related to embedded security are a subset of the overall security of the application areas, which must also balance other design criteria such as cost, power, reliability, usability and function. Recent trends are converging to make the security of embedded systems an increasingly important and difficult objective, requiring new trans-disciplinary approaches to solve problems on a 5-10 year horizon.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2018

Probing Attacks on Physical Layer Key Agreement for Automotive Controller Area Networks (Extended Version)

Efficient key management for automotive networks (CAN) is a critical element, governing the adoption of security in the next generation of vehicles. A recent promising approach for dynamic key agreement between groups of nodes, Plug-and-Secure for CAN, has been demonstrated to be information theoretically secure based on the physical properties of the CAN bus. In this paper, we illustrate side-channel attacks, leading to nearly-complete leakage of the secret key bits, by an adversary that is capable of probing the CAN bus. We identify the fundamental characteristics that lead to such attacks and propose techniques to minimize the information leakage at the hardware, controller and system levels.

cs.CR↗