Paper published at the 39th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) in July 2019 UpKit: An Open-Source, Portable, and Lightweight Update Framework for Constrained IoT Devices Antonio Langiu, Carlo Alberto Boano, Markus Schuß, and Kay Romer¨ Institute of Technical Informatics, Graz University of Technology, Austria E-mail:
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[email protected] Abstract—Updating the software running on constrained IoT to embed some software update capabilities in the firmware devices such as low-power sensors and actuators in a secure and running on each IoT device [6], [7]. Such capabilities include, efficient way is an open problem. The limited computational, among others, the (over-the-air) download of the update image, memory, and storage capabilities of these devices, together with their small energy budget, indeed, restrict the number of features the verification of its integrity and authenticity, as well as its that can be embedded into an update system and make it installation [8]. All these steps should be performed while also difficult to build a generic and compact solution. As a minimizing the downtime of a device and its services. result, existing update systems for constrained IoT devices are often not portable, do not perform a proper verification of the Updating constrained IoT devices. Updating the software downloaded firmware, or focus only on a single phase of the running on constrained IoT devices, e.g., low-power sensors update process, which exposes them to security threats and calls and actuators [9], is still an open research problem [6], for new solutions.