Embedded Systems Design Europe - March 2008 - (Page 5)

commentary Editor Colin Holland Tel +44 (0) 208 319 1324 email: chollandse18@mac.com Editorial address: PO Box 32444, London SE18 3ZP Advertising Production Manager Lydia Gijsegom & Maggie Fleerackers Tel +32 (0) 2 740 00 50 email: production@eetimes.be Circulation Luc Desimpel Tel +32 (0) 2 740 0055 email: luc.desimpel@eetimes.be Art Manager Jean-Paul Speliers Tel +32 (0)2 740 0052 email: jean-paul.speliers@eetimes.be Finance Ricardo Pinto Ferreira Tel +32 (0)2 740 0051 email: ricardo.pintoferreira@eetimes.be Advertisement contacts see page 43 Editorial Director Jean-Pierre Joosting Tel +32 (0)2 740 0056 email: jean-pierre.joosting@eetimes.be Publisher Andre Rousselot Tel +32 (0)2 740 0053 email: aroussel@eetimes.be European Business Press 144 Avenue Eugène Plasky 1030 Brussels - Belgium Tel: +32 (0)2 740 00 50 Fax: +32 (0)2 740 00 59 Email: info@eetimes.be www.embedded.com/europe VAT Registration: BE 461.357.437 RPM: Brussels Company Number: 0461357437 Software security – a matter of life and death L Techinsights – a division of United Business Media, LLC Paul Miller President, Chief Executive Ofﬁcer © 2008 E.B.P. SA, a Techinsights company • Embedded Systems Design Europe is published eight times a year. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without the express prior written consent of the publisher. The contents of Embedded Systems Design Europe are subject to reproduction in information storage and retrieval systems. º • Embedded Systems Design Europe is available free to qualiﬁed readers and to others for an annual subscription of €150. Refunds on cancelled subscriptions will only be provided at the Publisher’s discretion. Subscription queries tel: +32 2 740 00 50 • Printed by Perka. ast month in this column we were anticipating an interesting visit to Embedded World in Nuremberg and the event turned out to meet all our expectations. The exhibition set new records with 675 exhibitors – up 14 percent – and 17,341 trade visitors from all over the world – up 27 percent. Particularly impressive was the rise of 56 percent in international attendance. Engineers thronged the exhibition aisles and conference centre to be informed and educated but it was a bonus to be entertained. David Kleidermacher, CTO of Green Hills Software, did exactly that in his executive summit keynote which looked at how healthy software is, especially in safety critical systems. Kleidermacher felt the general public think bad software security is only the subject of futuristic adventures and used the Bruce Willis movie colloquially known as Die Hard 4 but ofﬁcially titled Live Free or Die Hard as an example. In the ﬁlm cyber terrorists were able to hack into Washington DC’s trafﬁc control system and turn all the lights green causing chaos. Kleidermacher was watching the movie with his wife who, taking advantage of having an expert in the family, posed the question: Can this really happen? It turns out that the proposition was not that far fetched with a number of examples on record including a hack of the LA trafﬁc light system and reports that the U.S. Accountability Ofﬁce found that the nations air trafﬁc control system was wide open to hacking while in a separate incident a PC crash Colin Holland is editor of Embedded Systems Design Europe. He can be contacted at cholland@cmp.com. put 800 planes in jeopardy with pilots having to use cell phones to communicate with each other. In another scene in the ﬁlm the good guys persuaded an operator in a remote call center to switch on the ignition of a car for which they didn’t have the keys. That might seem far fetched said Kleidermacher but maybe not, as late last year General Motors announced an improved version of its OnStar telematics system that could be used to shut your car’s engine off remotely. “Be afraid, be very afraid,” warned Kleidermacher. What about the power grid. In the ﬁlm Willis watches from a hill at night as sections of the Washington DC landscape go black in turn as the hackers turn the power off. Another exaggeration, no said Kleidermacher, in 2004 a software bug contributed to a blackout of northern eastern U.S. As a result of the outage, New York City reported 60 serious ﬁres and 3,000 ﬁre calls, 800 elevator rescues, and 80,000 calls to 911. As the movie comes to its climax a ﬂight of F-35 jets are scrambled and one jet’s command and control communications system is hacked into and it is ordered to attack Willis destroying much of the freeway in the process. Not another far-fetched plot that has actually happened? At last Kleidermacher gets his pay off. The F-35 uses Green Hills’ INTEGRITY operating system for its mission and display systems, its communication/navigation/identiﬁcation systems and crypto engine. It is based on EAL6+ certiﬁcation – Windows and Linux are only EAL4 level – and this higher level is the security we need to stop our weapons being turned on ourselves, explained Kleidermacher. But this level could also be used selectively in commercial applications using multicores and hypervisors to improve security. 5 www.embedded.com | embedded systems design europe | MARCH 2008 005-ESDE.indd 5 7/03/08 13:09:19 http://www.embedded.com/europe http://www.embedded.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Embedded Systems Design Europe - March 2008

Embedded Systems Design Europe - March 2008 Distributors to Increase Embedded Focus Kontron and Quanta to Join Forces Coverity Raises $22m as European Business Booms Help is at Hand for Europe's Industrial Control Developers Milestones in Embedded Systems Microsoft is Recruiting for Embedded Center in Aachen European Designers to Win Cash for Green Designs Duo Work on Smaller Form Factor Europe Invests in Real-Time Java for Multicore Systems Curtiss-Wright Buys Pentland Systems Designing DSP-Based Motor Control Using Fuzzy Logic Lower the Cost of Intelligent Power Control with FPGAs Virtualizing Embedded Linux Back to the Future: Manchester Encoding Is Multicore Hype or Reality New Products Advertising Contacts

Embedded Systems Design Europe - March 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.