research-article

eFuzz: A Fuzzer for DLMS/COSEM Electricity Meters

Authors:

Henrique Dantas,

Zekeriya Erkin,

Christian Doerr,

Raymond Hallie,

Gerrit van der BijAuthors Info & Claims

SEGS '14: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Smart Energy Grid Security

Pages 31 - 38

https://doi.org/10.1145/2667190.2667194

Published: 07 November 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Smart grids enable new functionalities like remote and micro management and consequently, provide increased efficiency, easy management and effectiveness of the entire power grid infrastructure. In order to achieve this, smart meters are attached to the communication network, collecting fine granular data. Unfortunately, as the smart meters are limited devices connected to the network and running software, they also make the whole smart grid more vulnerable than the traditional grids in term of software problems and even possible cyber attacks. In this paper, we work towards an increased software security of smart metering devices and propose a fuzzing framework, eFuzz, built on the generic fuzzing framework Peach to detect software problems. eFuzz tests smart metering devices based on the communication protocol DLMS/COSEM, the standard protocol used in Europe, for possible faults. Our experiments prove the effectiveness of using an automated fuzzing framework compared to resource demanding, human made software protocol inspections. As an example, eFuzz detected between 10 and 40 bugs in different configurations in less than 3 hours while a manual inspection takes weeks. We also investigate the quality of the eFuzz results by comparing with the traditional non-automated evaluation of the same device with respect to scope and efficiency. Our analysis shows that eFuzz is a powerful tool for security inspections for smart meters, and embedded systems in general.

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Cited By

Uwibambe MPan YLi Q(2023)Fuzzing for Power Grids: A Comparative Study of Existing Frameworks and a New Method for Detecting Silent Crashes in Control Devices2023 IEEE Design Methodologies Conference (DMC)10.1109/DMC58182.2023.10412473(1-6)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/DMC58182.2023.10412473
Ilgner PFujdiak R(2022)Fuzzing Framework for IEC 60870-5-104 ProtocolProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering10.1145/3569966.3570026(190-194)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3569966.3570026
Werquin THubrechtsen RThangarajan APiessens FMühlberg J(2019)Automated Fuzzing of Automotive Control Units2019 International Workshop on Secure Internet of Things (SIOT)10.1109/SIOT48044.2019.9637090(1-8)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/SIOT48044.2019.9637090
Show More Cited By

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eFuzz: A Fuzzer for DLMS/COSEM Electricity Meters

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SEGS '14: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Smart Energy Grid Security

November 2014

60 pages

ISBN:9781450331548

DOI:10.1145/2667190

General Chairs:
Klaus Kursawe
ENCS, The Netherlands
,
Benessa Defend
ENCS, The Netherlands
,
Program Chair:
Klaus Kursawe
ENCS, The Netherlands

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGSAC: ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit, and Control

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 November 2014

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CCS'14

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CCS'14: 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

November 7, 2014

Arizona, Scottsdale, USA

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SEGS '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 7 of 11 submissions, 64%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 19 of 38 submissions, 50%

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ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

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Cited By

Uwibambe MPan YLi Q(2023)Fuzzing for Power Grids: A Comparative Study of Existing Frameworks and a New Method for Detecting Silent Crashes in Control Devices2023 IEEE Design Methodologies Conference (DMC)10.1109/DMC58182.2023.10412473(1-6)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/DMC58182.2023.10412473
Ilgner PFujdiak R(2022)Fuzzing Framework for IEC 60870-5-104 ProtocolProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering10.1145/3569966.3570026(190-194)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3569966.3570026
Werquin THubrechtsen RThangarajan APiessens FMühlberg J(2019)Automated Fuzzing of Automotive Control Units2019 International Workshop on Secure Internet of Things (SIOT)10.1109/SIOT48044.2019.9637090(1-8)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/SIOT48044.2019.9637090
Men JXu GHan ZSun ZZhou XLian WCheng X(2019)Finding Sands in the Eyes: Vulnerabilities Discovery in IoT With EUFuzzer on Human Machine InterfaceIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29310617(103751-103759)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2931061
Erkin Z(2015)Private data aggregation with groups for smart grids in a dynamic setting using CRT2015 IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS)10.1109/WIFS.2015.7368584(1-6)Online publication date: Nov-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/WIFS.2015.7368584

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