Following with the disclosure of robotics-related work, we’re proud to introduce aztarna, a footprinting tool for robots.
Briefly:
Industry 4.0 is changing the commonly held assumption that robots are to be deployed in closed and isolated networks. When analyzed from a security point of view, the global picture is disheartening: robotics industry has not seriously allocated effort to follow good security practices in the robots produced. Instead, most manufacturers keep forwarding the problem to the end-users of these machines. As learned in previous technological revolutions, such as at the dawn of PCs or smartphones, action needs to be taken in time to avoid disastrous consequences. In an attempt to provide the robotics and security communities with the right tools to perform assessments, in this paper we present aztarna, a footprinting tool for robotics. We discuss how such tool can facilitate the process of identifying vestiges of different robots, while maintaining an extensible structure aimed for future fingerprinting extensions. With this contribution, we aim to raise awareness and interest of the robotics community, robot manufacturers and robot end-users on the need of starting global actions to embrace security. We open source the tool and disclose preliminary results that demonstrate the current insecurity landscape in industry. We argue that the robotic ecosystem is in need of generating a robot security community, conscious about good practices and empowered by the right tools.
- Source code: https://github.com/aliasrobotics/aztarna
- Introductory article at Alias Robotics webpage: https://aliasrobotics.com/research/aztarna.htm
- Original aztarna white paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.09490.pdf
Happy to discuss over our preliminary results!
A small disclaimer: Alias Robotics supports original robot manufacturers assessing their security and improving their quality of software. By no means we encourage or promote the unauthorized tampering with running robotic systems. This can cause serious human harm and material damages.