How Memory-Safe is IoT? Assessing the Impact of Memory-Protection Solutions for Securing Wireless Gateways
Vadim Safronov, Ionut Bostan, Nicholas Allott, Andrew Martin

TL;DR
This paper evaluates the security of IoT wireless gateways by analyzing memory-related vulnerabilities, highlighting the importance of secure-by-design solutions to mitigate threats in diverse IoT deployments.
Contribution
It provides an empirical large-scale analysis of memory vulnerabilities in IoT gateways and discusses the trade-offs of emerging memory safety technologies.
Findings
Memory vulnerabilities are the majority of threats in IoT gateways.
Secure-by-Design solutions are essential for comprehensive protection.
Choice of memory protection depends on use case and overhead considerations.
Abstract
The rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled novel user-centred applications, including many in safety-critical areas such as healthcare, smart environment security, and emergency response systems. The diversity in IoT manufacturers, standards, and devices creates a combinatorial explosion of such deployment scenarios, leading to increased security and safety threats due to the difficulty of managing such heterogeneity. In almost every IoT deployment, wireless gateways are crucial for interconnecting IoT devices and providing services, yet they are vulnerable to external threats and serve as key entry points for large-scale IoT attacks. Memory-based vulnerabilities are among the most serious threats in software, with no universal solution yet available. Legacy memory protection mechanisms, such as canaries, RELRO, NX, and Fortify, have enhanced memory safety but…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSecurity and Verification in Computing · Advanced Malware Detection Techniques · Network Security and Intrusion Detection
