Static Analysis to Enforce Safe Value Flow in Embedded Control Systems

Embedded control systems consist of multiple components with different criticality levels interacting with each other. For example, in a passenger jet, the navigation system interacts with the passenger entertainment system in providing passengers the distance-to-destination information. It is imperative that failures in the non-critical subsystem should not compromise critical functionality. This architectural principle for robustness can, however, be easily compromised by implementation-level errors. We describe SafeFlow, which statically analyzes core components in the system to ensure that they use non-core values communicated through shared memory only if they are run-time monitored for safety or recoverability. Using simple, local annotations and semantic restrictions on shared memory usage in the core component, SafeFlow precisely identifies accesses to unmonitored non-core values. With a few false positives, it identifies erroneous dependencies of critical data on noncore va...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: DSN
• Authors: Sumant Kowshik, Grigore Rosu, Lui Sha
• Keywords: Computer Networks, DSN 2006, Non-core Values, Shared Memory, Unmonitored Non-core Values