research-article

Demystifying Soft-Error Mitigation by Control-Flow Checking -- A New Perspective on its Effectiveness

Authors:

Simon Schuster,

Isabella Stilkerich,

Christian Dietrich,

Wolfgang SchröDer-PreikschatAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Volume 16, Issue 5s

Article No.: 180, Pages 1 - 19

https://doi.org/10.1145/3126503

Published: 27 September 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Soft errors are a challenging and urging problem in the domain of safety-critical embedded systems. For decades, checking schemes have been investigated and improved to mitigate soft-error effects for the class of control-flow faults, with current industrial standards strongly recommending their use.

However, reality looks different: Taking a systems perspective, we implemented four representative Control-Flow Checking (CFC) schemes and put them through their paces in 396 fault-injection campaigns. In contrast to previous work, which typically relied on probability-based vulnerability metrics, we accounted for the influence of memory and time overheads on the fault-space dimensions and applied those in full-scan fault injections. This change in procedure alone severely degraded the perceived effectiveness of CFC.

In addition, we expanded the perspective to data-flow faults and their influence on the overall susceptibility, an aspect that so far has been largely ignored. Our results suggest that, without accompanying measures, any improvement regarding control-flow faults is dominated by the increase in data faults caused by the increased attack surface in terms of memory and runtime overhead. Moreover, CFC performance less depended on the detection capabilities than on general aspects of the concrete binary compilation and execution.

In conclusion, incorporating CFC is not as straightforward as often assumed and the vulnerability of systems with hardened control-flow may in many cases even be increased by the schemes themselves.

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Mishra TChantem TGerdes R(2022)Survey of Control-flow Integrity Techniques for Real-time Embedded SystemsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/353827521:4(1-32)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2022
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Demystifying Soft-Error Mitigation by Control-Flow Checking -- A New Perspective on its Effectiveness

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems Volume 16, Issue 5s

Special Issue ESWEEK 2017, CASES 2017, CODES + ISSS 2017 and EMSOFT 2017

October 2017

1448 pages

ISSN:1539-9087

EISSN:1558-3465

DOI:10.1145/3145508

Editor:
Sandeep K. Shukla
Indian Institute of Technology, India

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

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ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 27 September 2017

Accepted: 01 June 2017

Revised: 01 June 2017

Received: 01 March 2017

Published in TECS Volume 16, Issue 5s

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2023.3245842
Mishra TChantem TGerdes R(2022)Survey of Control-flow Integrity Techniques for Real-time Embedded SystemsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/353827521:4(1-32)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3538275
Gujarati AYang NBrandenburg B(2022)In-ConcReTeS: Interactive Consistency meets Distributed Real-Time Systems, Again!2022 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS)10.1109/RTSS55097.2022.00027(211-224)Online publication date: Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/RTSS55097.2022.00027
Ahmad HSedaghat Y(2022)Software-based Control-Flow Error Detection with Hardware Performance Counters in ARM Processors2022 CPSSI 4th International Symposium on Real-Time and Embedded Systems and Technologies (RTEST)10.1109/RTEST56034.2022.9850096(1-8)Online publication date: 30-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/RTEST56034.2022.9850096
Fischer MRiedel OLechler A(2022)Comprehensive Analysis of Software-Based Fault Tolerance with Arithmetic Coding for Performant Encoding of Integer CalculationsComputer Safety, Reliability, and Security10.1007/978-3-031-14835-4_10(144-157)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-14835-4_10
Prasanth VParekhji RAmrutur B(2021)Exploiting Application Tolerance for Functional Safety2021 IEEE International Test Conference (ITC)10.1109/ITC50571.2021.00056(399-408)Online publication date: Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ITC50571.2021.00056
Hoppe AKastensmidt FBecker J(2021)Investigating real-time control-flow error detection in hardware: How fast can we detect errors and take action?Microelectronics Reliability10.1016/j.microrel.2021.114264126(114264)Online publication date: Nov-2021
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Hoppe ABecker JKastensmidt F(2020)Fine Grained Control Flow Checking with Dedicated FPGA Monitors2020 IEEE 33rd International System-on-Chip Conference (SOCC)10.1109/SOCC49529.2020.9524751(219-224)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2020
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Liu XLiu PYan XZou CXia RZhou HHou KDe Vaulx C(2018)Energy Optimization and Fault Tolerance to Embedded System Based on Adaptive Heterogeneous Multi-Core Hardware Architecture2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security Companion (QRS-C)10.1109/QRS-C.2018.00063(316-323)Online publication date: Jul-2018
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