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Virginia Tech

Defending Real-Time Systems through Timing-Aware Designs

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Real-time computing systems are those that are designed to achieve computing goals by certain deadlines. Real-time computing systems are present in everything from cars to airplanes, pacemakers to industrial-control systems, and other pieces of critical infrastructure. With the increasing interconnectivity of these systems, system security issues and the constant threat of manipulation by malicious external attackers that have plagued general computing systems, now threaten the integrity and safety of real-time systems. This dissertation discusses three different defense techniques that focuses on the role that real-time scheduling theory can play to reduce runtime cost, and guarantee correctness when applying these defense strategies to real-time systems. The first work introduces a novel timing aware defense strategy for the CAN bus that utilizes TrustZone on state-of-the-art ARMv8-M microcontrollers. The second reduces the runtime cost of control-flow integrity (CFI), a popular system security defense technique, by correctly modeling when a real-time system performs I/O, and exploiting the model to schedule CFI procedures efficiently. Finally, the third studies and provides a lightweight mitigation strategy for a recently discovered vulnerability within mixed criticality real-time systems.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Computer Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2022

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Mishra, Tanmaya
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Chantem, Thidapat
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Tilevich, Eli
  • Zhang, Ning
  • Gerdes, Ryan M.
  • Yu, Guoqiang

Subjects

dc:subject × 6

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:34417
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/109806

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Mishra, Tanmaya. Defending Real-Time Systems through Timing-Aware Designs. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/109806