New Research Identifies Major TTE Network Vulnerability

A new attack discovered by the University of Michigan and NASA exploits a trusted network technology to create unexpected and potentially catastrophic behavior. The technology — time-triggered ethernet (TTE) — is widely used in critical infrastructures such as spacecraft, aircraft, energy-generation systems, and industrial control systems.

“We wanted to determine what the impact would be in a real system,” said Baris Kasikci  , the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. “If someone executed this attack in a real spaceflight mission, what would the damage be?”

Transcript

00:00:00 >> Baris Kasikci: Mixing critical systems and non-critical systems into [the] same networks for cost reasons makes sense but at the same time you may end up being vulnerable to attacks. [Music] On screen text: Michigan Engineering and NASA researchers discovered and exploited a vulnerability in a trusted network technology widely used in the space, aviation, energy and industry sectors. Called Time-Triggered Ethernet, the technology allows a mix of critical and non-critical systems to run on the same network by relying on timing and synchronization to keep the data traffic separate. >> Kasikci: So the way the time-triggered ethernet protocol works is it uses a special

00:00:37 kind of message to provide the synchronization. The way our attack works is we can actually send electromagnetic interference through an ethernet cable into the switch at the right time to actually interfere with how messages are forwarded to the rest of the network. So we can send a malicious message. It can disrupt the synchronization in the network and have devices operate in unintended ways. On screen text: With NASA, they tested their attack on a simulated docking of a crewed Orion capsule and a robotic spacecraft. >> Kasikci: So we relied on a test bed in NASA Johnson Space Center that has real devices and real TTE ethernet switches and it's also capable of simulating real space flight missions.

00:01:25 On screen text: The attack interfered with the steering of the capsule at a critical moment causing it to veer off course and fail to dock. >> Kasikci: The way an attacker can actually introduce such a malicious device into a network is if that device comes from an untrusted supply chain. And there's benefits in procuring equipment from untrusted supply chains because they're readily available, there's no verification effort, you don't incur a lot of costs. But at the same time you can be vulnerable in such settings. On screen text: The team has reported their findings to major companies using this technology and many are already implementing fixes. >> Kasikci: Ultimately this kind of vulnerability is impacting really important safety critical

00:02:07 components that we depend on and use daily. So it's very important for me as a researcher to identify potential issues in the protocols that are used in these systems to make sure we can actually eliminate those issues and and build safe and secure systems. On screen text: Researcher Team - Andrew Loveless, Linh Thi Xuan Phan, Ronald Dreslinski, Baris Kasikci