CAS-003 · Question #631
An organization designs and develops safety-critical embedded firmware (inclusive of embedded OS and services) for the automotive industry. The organization has taken great care to exercise secure…
The correct answer is D. Ensure the firmware includes anti-malware services that will monitor and respond to any. Embedding anti-malware services directly within the automotive firmware provides active runtime monitoring and response capability to detect and defeat live attempts to replace or corrupt the firmware while vehicles are in the field.
Question
An organization designs and develops safety-critical embedded firmware (inclusive of embedded OS and services) for the automotive industry. The organization has taken great care to exercise secure software development practices for the firmware Of paramount importance is the ability to defeat attacks aimed at replacing or corrupting running firmware once the vehicle leaves production and is in the field Integrating, which of the following host and OS controls would BEST protect against this threat?
Options
- AConfigure the host to require measured boot with attestation using platform configuration registers
- BImplement out-of-band monitoring to analyze the state of running memory and persistent storage
- CPerform reverse engineering of the hardware to assess for any implanted logic or other supply
- DEnsure the firmware includes anti-malware services that will monitor and respond to any
- ERequire software engineers to adhere to a coding standard, leverage static and dynamic analysis
How the community answered
(52 responses)- A27% (14)
- B8% (4)
- C12% (6)
- D50% (26)
- E4% (2)
Why each option
Embedding anti-malware services directly within the automotive firmware provides active runtime monitoring and response capability to detect and defeat live attempts to replace or corrupt the firmware while vehicles are in the field.
Measured boot with attestation using platform configuration registers only verifies firmware integrity at boot time and cannot detect or respond to runtime attacks that corrupt firmware while the system is actively running.
Out-of-band monitoring analyzes memory and storage state passively and lacks the in-band response capability needed to actively block or defeat live firmware replacement attempts.
Reverse engineering hardware for implanted logic is a supply-chain assessment technique applied before deployment and does not protect against attacks on running firmware that occur after the vehicle is in the field.
Anti-malware services integrated into the firmware itself continuously inspect running memory and persistent storage for unauthorized modifications, enabling real-time detection and response to firmware replacement or corruption attacks after the vehicle leaves production. Unlike boot-time attestation, in-firmware monitoring remains active during normal vehicle operation when runtime attacks are most likely to occur. This host-level control directly addresses the specific threat of field attacks against running firmware without requiring external infrastructure.
Coding standards and static or dynamic analysis tools are pre-deployment software development controls that reduce vulnerability introduction but provide no protection against runtime field attacks on already-deployed firmware.
Concept tested: Embedded firmware runtime integrity protection in automotive systems
Source: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-193.pdf
Topics
Community Discussion
No community discussion yet for this question.