PCSpoof: New Vulnerability Affects Networking Tech Used by Spacecraft and Aircraft

guest · Nov 15, 2022

By Ravie Lakshmanan - November 15, 2022

A novel attack method has been disclosed against a crucial piece of technology called time-triggered ethernet (TTE) that's used in safety-critical infrastructure, potentially causing the failure of systems powering spacecraft and aircraft.
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Dubbed PCspooF by a group of academics and researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, and the NASA Johnson Space Center, the technique is designed to break TTE's security guarantees and induce TTE devices to lose synchronization for up to a second, a behavior that can even lead to uncontrolled maneuvers in spaceflight missions and threaten crew safety.
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The findings show that the use of common hardware in a system engineered to provide strict isolation assurances can sometimes defeat those very protections, the researchers pointed out, adding mixed-criticality software systems should be examined meticulously in a similar manner to ensure the isolation mechanisms are foolproof.

"The TTE protocols are very mature and well-vetted, and many of the most important parts are formally proven," Kasikci said.
"In a way that is what makes our attack interesting – that we were able to figure out how to violate some guarantees of the protocol despite its maturity. But to do that, we had to think outside the box and figure out how to make the hardware behave in a way the protocol does not expect."
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University of Michigan: Cyber vulnerability in networks used by spacecraft, aircraft and energy generation systems

A new attack discovered by the University of Michigan and NASA exploits a trusted network technology to create unexpected and potentially catastrophic behavior
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PCSPOOF: Compromising the Safety of Time-Triggered Ethernet
(PDF): https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~barisk/public/pcspoof.pdf

We present PCSPOOF, the first attack to break TTE’s isolation guarantees. PCSPOOF is based on two key observations. First, it is possible for a BE device to infer private information about the TT part of the network that can be used to craft malicious synchronization messages. Second, by injecting electrical noise into a TTE switch over an Ethernet cable, a BE device can trick the switch into sending these malicious synchronization messages to other TTE devices.
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Our evaluation shows that successful attacks are possible in seconds, and that each successful attack
can cause TTE devices to lose synchronization for up to a second and drop tens of TT messages — both of which can result in the failure of critical systems like aircraft or automobiles.
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PCSpoof: New Vulnerability Affects Networking Tech Used by Spacecraft and Aircraft

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