TrackOS: A security-aware real-time operating system

Abstract

We describe an approach to control-flow integrity protection for real-time systems. We present TrackOS, a security-aware realtime operating system. TrackOS checks a task’s control stack against a statically-generated call graph, generated by an abstract interpretationbased tool that requires no source code. The monitoring is done from a dedicated task, the schedule of which is controlled by the real-time operating system scheduler. Finally, we implement a version of software-based attestation (SWATT) to ensure program-data integrity to strengthen our control-flow integrity checks. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by monitoring an open source autopilot in flight.