Address Behaviour Vulnerabilities in the Next Generation of Autonomous Robots

TL;DR

This paper identifies new security vulnerabilities in next-generation autonomous robots, focusing on threats beyond traditional hardware and network issues, and proposes a taxonomy and countermeasures for these risks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel taxonomy of security threats specific to autonomous robots operating in adversarial environments and suggests effective countermeasures.

Findings

Identified new security threats including privileged access misuse and sensor tampering.

Provided a taxonomy of attacks with realistic examples.

Outlined countermeasures for detection and mitigation.

Abstract

Robots applications in our daily life increase at an unprecedented pace. As robots will soon operate "out in the wild", we must identify the safety and security vulnerabilities they will face. Robotics researchers and manufacturers focus their attention on new, cheaper, and more reliable applications. Still, they often disregard the operability in adversarial environments where a trusted or untrusted user can jeopardize or even alter the robot's task. In this paper, we identify a new paradigm of security threats in the next generation of robots. These threats fall beyond the known hardware or network-based ones, and we must find new solutions to address them. These new threats include malicious use of the robot's privileged access, tampering with the robot sensors system, and tricking the robot's deliberation into harmful behaviors. We provide a taxonomy of attacks that exploit these vulnerabilities with realistic examples, and we outline effective countermeasures to prevent better, detect, and mitigate them.