CASE STUDY SNAPSHOT
Customer : A Fortune 100 Industrial conglomerateSize : >1000 – 10000
Project vertical : Industrial
Challenge : Need for a portable configuration framework deployable across all hardware platforms without compromising performance.
Solution : Developed a comprehensive, secure-by-design solution centred around a highly customized POCO web server.
Services & Products Availed : Product engineering services, Embedded Application Development
Tools and Technologies :
- Key Hardware: ARM Linux
- Software Development: C++
- Frameworks: POCO, BOOST
- Peripherals: Wi-Fi, Ethernet etc
INTRODUCTION
A Fortune 100 industrial conglomerate, a global leader in security and fire monitoring systems, needed a unified and highly secure method to configure their diverse range of field devices. Their existing mechanisms posed significant operational inefficiencies and security risks, jeopardizing both their products and their customers' infrastructure.
CHALLENGE
The client manages a vast and varied product ecosystem, with devices built on different processor architectures (such as ARM, MIPS, and x86) and operating systems. This hardware heterogeneity made a standardized configuration approach difficult. Previous methods, like Command Line Interface (CLI) over serial ports and physical SD card updates, were not only cumbersome for field engineers but also presented gaping security holes. They lacked robust authentication, encryption, and protection against modern cybersecurity threats. The core challenge was to engineer a single, portable configuration framework that could be deployed across all hardware platforms without compromising performance, while simultaneously fortifying the devices against escalating Industrial IoT (IIoT) attacks.
SOLUTION
Embien devised a comprehensive, secure-by-design solution centred around a highly customized POCO (POrtable COmponents) web server. Our approach systematically addressed the client's core requirements of security, portability, performance, and scalability.
Phase 1: Strategic Technology Selection
Our initial analysis confirmed that traditional methods were untenable. A web-based interface was identified as the most flexible and user-friendly approach. The critical decision was the choice of web server technology. While options like Apache or lighttpd are powerful, they often carry a larger footprint and dependencies not suitable for all embedded contexts.
Embien selected the POCO C++ Libraries, specifically its lightweight web server, for several strategic reasons:
Ultimate Portability: Written in modern C++, POCO is inherently cross-platform. This was crucial for the client's diverse hardware, allowing a single codebase to be compiled natively for ARM, MIPS, and x86 targets with minimal to no modification. This eliminated the need for separate development efforts for each product line.
High Performance & Low Footprint: For embedded systems, resource utilization is key. Unlike solutions requiring a virtual machine (like Java-based servers), POCO applications are compiled into native binaries. This results in significantly faster execution speeds and a much lower memory footprint. Embien further customized the POCO build to include only the necessary modules, slimming down the final binary to its absolute minimum size.
Seamless Application Integration: A key architectural decision was to run the POCO web server as a thread within the main device application, rather than as a separate process. This eliminated the overhead associated with Inter-Process Communication (IPC), allowing for faster data exchange between the application logic and the configuration interface. It also gave the main application precise control to start and stop the web server on demand, further enhancing security and resource management.
Phase 2: Building a Multi-Layered Security Architecture
Security was the paramount concern. Embien implemented a multi-layered defense strategy that went far beyond basic password protection.
Enforced HTTPS Communication: All communication between the user's browser and the device was exclusively over HTTPS, with the insecure HTTP protocol completely disabled. We implemented robust TLS 1.2/1.3 with 128-bit encryption to protect all data in transit, ensuring that configuration parameters could not be intercepted or tampered with over the network.
Hardware-Anchored Cryptographic Security: The cornerstone of our security design was the protection of the server's private keys. Storing cryptographic keys on a standard filesystem is a major vulnerability. To mitigate this, Embien integrated a dedicated Crypto Authentication chip on the hardware. During the manufacturing process, the unique server certificate and private key were securely provisioned directly into this tamper-resistant chip. The private key could never be read out, making it immune to theft even if an attacker gained root access to the device's filesystem. This hardware-anchored trust provided a level of security that software-only solutions cannot match.
Mitigating Application-Layer Attacks: We built robust defences against the most common web application vulnerabilities:
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Protection: Every session was protected with a unique, randomly generated CSRF token. This token was required for any state-changing request (e.g., saving a configuration), ensuring that the action was intentionally initiated by the legitimate user, not a malicious third-party site.
Session Hijacking Prevention: Secure, randomly generated session cookies were used to authenticate user sessions. These cookies were flagged as HttpOnly and Secure, preventing them from being accessed by client-side scripts or transmitted over insecure connections.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Prevention: A strict input validation and sanitization engine was implemented. All data submitted from the client browser was rigorously validated against a whitelist of expected data types, formats, and value ranges before being processed. This prevented attackers from injecting malicious scripts into the configuration pages.
Phase 3: Streamlining Development and Deployment
To accelerate development, Embien leveraged POCO's powerful toolset. Web pages containing HTML were interleaved with C++ code, similar to JSP, allowing for dynamic content generation directly from the application logic. POCO's code generator automatically created C++ page handler classes from the HTML files.
Furthermore, all web assets (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) were compiled directly into the final application binary. This monolithic approach offered two distinct advantages:
1. Enhanced Security: There were no loose web files on the filesystem that could be illicitly modified.
2. Simplified Updates: A firmware update became a simple, atomic operation of replacing a single binary file, guaranteeing consistency and reducing the risk of a failed or partial update.
The final deliverable was not just a web server, but a complete, self-contained, and cyber-resilient secure configuration module that could be easily integrated into any of the client's products, providing a consistent and secure user experience across their entire portfolio.
BENEFITS
Achieved Unparalleled Device Security: By anchoring cryptographic keys in hardware crypto-chips, the solution rendered them immune to filesystem-based breaches and effectively mitigated common web vulnerabilities like CSRF and XSS.
Established a Unified & Scalable Platform: A single, portable C++ configuration framework was created for deployment across the entire portfolio of diverse hardware, drastically reducing development overhead and time-to-market for new products.
Improved Operational Efficiency: Streamlined field service operations by providing engineers with a secure, intuitive browser-based interface for device configuration, eliminating the need for physical device access or insecure command-line tools.
Optimized Performance & Resource Usage: Maximized device performance and minimized memory footprint by leveraging a lightweight POCO architecture integrated directly into the main application, ensuring the configuration tool did not impact the primary functions of the security systems.
Future-Proofed the Product Ecosystem: Provided a modular and secure foundation that can be easily updated to adapt to emerging cybersecurity threats, protecting the client's brand reputation and ensuring long-term customer trust.
CONCLUSION
Embien successfully delivered a robust, secure, and highly portable configuration solution for a global industrial leader, fundamentally transforming their device management strategy. By masterfully integrating the lightweight POCO web server with hardware-level security and a multi-layered defence strategy, we fortified their products against modern cyber threats while simultaneously enhancing operational efficiency and reducing long-term maintenance costs. This project stands as a testament to Embien's expertise in creating sophisticated, secure embedded systems for mission-critical applications.
Is your organization facing challenges in securing its embedded or IoT devices? Partner with Embien to engineer a custom, cyber-resilient solution.
