• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.31-42
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• 2014

Debugger systems are necessary to apply dynamic program analysis when evaluating security properties of embedded system software. It may be possible to make the use of software-based debugger and/or DBI framework if target devices support general purpose operating systems, however, constraints on applicability as well as environmental transparency might be incurred thereby hindering overall analyzability. Analysis with JTAG (IEEE 1149.1) debugging devices can overcome these difficulties in that no change would be involved in terms of internal software environment. In that sense, JTAG API can facilitate to practically perform dynamic program analysis for evaluating security properties of target device software. In this paper, we introduce an implementation of JTAG API to enable analysis of ARM core based embedded systems. The API function set includes the categories of debugger and target device controls: debugging environment and operation. To verify API applicability, we also provide example analysis tool implementations: our JTAG API could be used to build kernel function fuzzing and live memory forensics modules.