Securing real-time control systems requires authentication mechanisms that don't jeopardize timing guarantees. This work is innovative because it provides empirical evaluation of HMAC performance overhead in time-triggered systems, enabling designers to understand trade-offs between security and timing. The analysis supports informed design decisions for security-critical real-time systems.
This paper evaluates performance of Hash-based Message Authentication (HMAC) mechanisms in time-triggered networked control systems. The work analyzes computational overhead and network impact of adding authentication to TTEthernet communications. Testing on an automotive control system measures HMAC execution time and frame transmission delays.
Experimental results show HMAC adds 20-32 byte overhead per message and introduces measurable but acceptable latency in TTEthernet communications. Testing with SHA-1, SHA-2, and SHA-3 hash functions demonstrates feasibility of authentication in time-triggered networks. Results support practical deployment of HMAC in automotive and other real-time systems.
@inproceedings{Martins2014,
author = {Martins}, G. and {Bhattacharjee}, A. and Dubey, Abhishek and {Koutsoukos}, X. D.},
booktitle = {2014 7th International Symposium on Resilient Control Systems (ISRCS)},
title = {Performance evaluation of an authentication mechanism in time-triggered networked control systems},
year = {2014},
month = {aug},
pages = {1-6},
abstract = {An important challenge in networked control systems is to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the message in order to secure the communication and prevent attackers or intruders from compromising the system. However, security mechanisms may jeopardize the temporal behavior of the network data communication because of the computation and communication overhead. In this paper, we study the effect of adding Hash Based Message Authentication (HMAC) to a time-triggered networked control system. Time Triggered Architectures (TTAs) provide a deterministic and predictable timing behavior that is used to ensure safety, reliability and fault tolerance properties. The paper analyzes the computation and communication overhead of adding HMAC and the impact on the performance of the time-triggered network. Experimental validation and performance evaluation results using a TTEthernet network are also presented.},
category = {conference},
contribution = {minor},
doi = {10.1109/ISRCS.2014.6900098},
file = {:Martins2014-Performance_Evaluation_of_an_Authentication_Mechanism_in_Time-Triggered_Network_Control_Systems.pdf:PDF},
issn = {null},
keywords = {time-triggered networks, message authentication, HMAC, real-time systems, TTEthernet, network security},
tag = {platform},
month_numeric = {8}
}