Dynamic Software Component Authentication for Autonomous Systems using Slack space

Autonomous systems like self-driving cars, unmanned aerial and marine vehicles, smart robots etc., are rapidly emerging in scientific and industrial sectors for mission-critical applications, in recent times. Critical systems are developed using component-based software engineering paradigm by most of the software developers. Each activity in a component-based system is performed by different components of the system and each dynamic component integration with the system gives an opportunity for adversaries to insert malicious code into the system for execution through the components. In present work, a security model is proposed using concept of slack space of software components, for authentication of components to safely integrate with an autonomous system. By using this methodology, a mission-critical autonomous system can detect tampered components and prevent integrating them.