2020 · Conference paper

FirmAE: Towards Large-Scale Emulation of IoT Firmware for Dynamic Analysis

Mingeun Kim; Dongkwan Kim; Eunsoo Kim; Suryeon Kim; Yeongjin Jang; Yongdae Kim

Extends Firmadyne with empirically derived interventions for boot, networking, NVRAM, kernel behavior, and other runtime failures, enabling Linux router and IP-camera firmware web services to run for dynamic analysis.

Scope and limitations

Arbitration deliberately changes execution and targets functioning web interfaces, not identical physical-device behavior. The evaluation covers ARM little-endian and MIPS little-/big-endian firmware from routers and IP cameras; heuristics may fail on unseen devices or configurations. It reuses firmware binaries rather than recovering their source.

Why it fits this collection

Provides a concrete firmware-rehosting method and evaluation for restoring analyzable network-service behavior when exact hardware emulation is unavailable.

Publication and review details

Venue: ACSAC 2020
Status: Conference paper
Publication / posting date: December 7, 2020
Date source: ACM-deposited Crossref print-publication date; the online-publication date is recorded separately in metadata notes.
DOI: 10.1145/3427228.3427294

ACM metadata records print publication on 2020-12-07 and online publication on 2020-12-08, pages 733–745. The six-author paper is separate from later repository updates. The pinned artifact README documents Ubuntu 20.04 and privileged run modes. Its MIT license does not license vendor firmware images or all dependencies; dataset downloads were not tested.

Sources reviewed 2026-10-16

Source review only; experiments were not rerun for this collection. Cite the original authors using the linked paper or BibTeX.

Scope and limitations

Why it fits this collection

Publication and review details

Primary sources