Netinfo Security ›› 2025, Vol. 25 ›› Issue (7): 1053-1062.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1671-1122.2025.07.005

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Firmware Simulation Scheme of IoT Devices Based on Dynamic Substitution of Library Functions

ZHANG Guanghua1,2,3, CHANG Jiyou2,3, CHEN Fang2,3, MAO Bomin4, WANG He1, ZHANG Jianyan2,3()   

  1. 1. School of Cyber Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
    2. School of Information Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang 050018, China
    3. Hebei Intelligent Internet of Things Technology Innovation Center, Shijiazhuang 050018, China
    4. Yangtze River Delta Research Institute of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Taicang 215400, China
  • Received:2024-06-03 Online:2025-07-10 Published:2025-08-07
  • Contact: ZHANG Jianyan E-mail:1179602456@qq.com

Abstract:

The limited resources of IoT devices make it difficult for traditional vulnerability detection technologies to be effectively applied to these devices. Firmware simulation technology provides a way to solve this problem, but the existing firmware simulation solutions have problems such as strong hardware dependence, high operating costs, and poor portability. In view of the shortcomings of existing simulation solutions, this paper proposed a firmware simulation scheme of IoT devices based on dynamic substitution of library functions. Firstly, a firmware simulation method based on human-computer collaboration was designed. The simulation environment was built through firmware analysis and firmware hosting, and expert experience in the process of firmware file acquisition was introduced. Then, a library function replacement technology based on symbolic execution was designed to extract key information from the previous stage, symbolic execution was used to analyze and guide library function generation, and finally compiled the library function into a dynamic link library to complete the library function replacement. The experimental results show that the simulation speed of the proposed scheme in the article has increased by an average of 80.50% compared to FIRMADYNE, and the optimized symbol execution speed has increased by more than 100% compared to before optimization. At the same time, through vulnerability replication and vulnerability mining verification, the simulation fidelity of this scheme can meet the requirements of vulnerability detection and mining.

Key words: Internet of things, firmware simulation, library function replacement, cross-compilation, vulnerability mining

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