Challenges in Firmware Re-Hosting, Emulation, and Analysis

43Citations
Citations of this article
55Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

Abstract

System emulation and firmware re-hosting have become popular techniques to answer various security and performance related questions, such as determining whether a firmware contain security vulnerabilities or meet timing requirements when run on a specific hardware platform. While this motivation for emulation and binary analysis has previously been explored and reported, starting to either work or research in the field is difficult. To this end, we provide a comprehensive guide for the practitioner or system emulation researcher. We layout common challenges faced during firmware re-hosting, explaining successive steps and surveying common tools used to overcome these challenges. We provide classification techniques on five different axes, including emulator methods, system type, fidelity, emulator purpose, and control. These classifications and comparison criteria enable the practitioner to determine the appropriate tool for emulation. We use our classifications to categorize popular works in the field and present 28 common challenges faced when creating, emulating, and analyzing a system from obtaining firmwares to post emulation analysis.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Wright, C., Moeglein, W. A., Bagchi, S., Kulkarni, M., & Clements, A. A. (2021, January 31). Challenges in Firmware Re-Hosting, Emulation, and Analysis. ACM Computing Surveys. Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3423167

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free