Other-the-Air firmware update on microcontrollers has always been a challenging - but required - topic to secure an IoT application. The RIOT operating system - https://riot-os.org - provides all the building blocks to perform firmware updates, with end-to-end security and standard protocols.

1. RIOT:
Towards Secure DevOps
on microcontroller-based IoT
Alexandre Abadie
Emmanuel Baccelli

2. Agenda
 Context
 RIOT: a brief overview
 Demo: Secure IoT DevOps with RIOT-fp

3. Internet
A multitude of
smaller, cheaper
microcontroller-
based devices
IoT: Cyber-Physical Deployments
Low-end IoT devices
- 1000x less energy
than RaspberryPi
- kBytes instead of
GBytes of memory

4. IoT: Device & Usecase Polymorphism
 Extremely varied use-cases, in almost all verticals
 Various vendors & architectures (8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit)
 Various low-power communication technologies (BLE, 802.15.4, LoRa…)
iotworm.com

5. Software on Low-end IoT Devices
 IoT software before
 rudimentary embedded software, vendor-specific (vendor-locked?)
 IoT software now
 Cybersecurity, interoperability, device management requirements…
increase complexity + drive the need for a real OS
Middleware integration and
Application
RTOS
ApplicationOS and Middleware
Development time
Development time
This slide is partly borrowed from Hannes Tschofenig, ARM

6. IoT Software: Current Trends
O. Hahm et al. "Operating Systems for Low-End
Devices in the Internet of Things: a Survey,"
IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2016.
ARM Cortex-M0+

7. Agenda
 Context
 RIOT: a brief overview
 Demo: Secure IoT DevOps with RIOT-fp

8. What is RIOT?
✓An operating system for IoT devices too small for Linux
✓A free, open source software platform & ecosystem
✓A world-wide community of developers

9. Large Open-Source Community
 2013: started as French-German research project
 2018: more than 200 contributors worldwide
 ~ 20,000 commits and ~10,000 Pull Requests
 Academics, makers, industry (SME & bigger companies)
 Hundreds of related scientific publications
 Products shipping with RIOT in US, Europe, Russia
 Yearly RIOT Summit conferences (summit.riot-os.org)
 next in Helsinki Sept. 5-6
Source:www.openhub.net/p/RIOT-OS
Monthly contributors
github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT
E. Baccelli et al. ‘RIOT: an Open Source Operating System for Low-end
Embedded Devices in the IoT,’ IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2018.

10.  Modularity around a micro-kernel –
building blocks, to be combined in all
thinkable ways; Caters for versatile use
cases & memory constraints;
 Unified APIs – across all hardware,
even for hardware-accessing APIs;
Enables code reuse and minimizes
code duplication;
 Vendor & techno. independence –
Vendor libraries: avoided; Design
decisions don’t tie RIOT to a particular
technology;
General-Purpose OS for low-end IoT
120+ boards supported
8-bit, 16-bit, 32bit MCUs
Minimal
config.
2,6kB RAM
3,2kB Flash
(Cortex-M)

11. Numerous Libraries
 Packages: bundling 3rd-party libraries
 Integrated on-the-fly at build–time
 Easy to add: just requires 2 Makefiles
 Patches (if needed) are typically minimal
C, C++ (JavaScript, Rust)

12. Network-level Interoperability
Wired & Bus
 CAN
 Ethernet
Low-power wireless LAN & WAN
 IEEE 802.15.4
 LoRa package
 BLE (work-in-progress)
IP Protocols Stacks
 Default stack (GNRC)
 Thread (package)
 lwIP (package)
 OpenWSN (in progress)
Experimental stacks
 CCN-lite (package)
 NDN-RIOT (package)

13. Agenda
 Context
 RIOT: a brief overview
 Demo: Secure IoT DevOps with RIOT-fp

14. RIOT-FP : Aiming for IoT cyber-security
RIOT-FP is an Inria project launched May 2019 combining RIOT with:
 Next generation IoT crypto primitives: small, fast and future-proof
 Secure IoT networking, object security, secure bootstrapping
 Formally verified IoT software modules within RIOT
 Secure IoT software updates, in practice, on most devices supported by RIOT
RIOT-fp on the web: https://future-proof-iot.github.io/

15. IoT Devices
Access point /
Border router
Low-power radio
IDE
Continuous
Integration
System
IoT Firmware
Update Repo
INTERNET 6LoWPAN, CoAP, SUIT
IoT
Software
Maintainer
(e.g. OEM)
DevOps for microcontroller-based IoT

16. RIOT Image 2
RIOT Image 1
Bootloader
Metadata
Metadata
Secure IoT Firmware Update: Workflow
RUNNING
IMAGE

17. Demo