EmbedWatch: Fat Pointer Solution for Detecting Spatial Memory Errors in Embedded Systems

This paper introduces EmbedWatch, an innovative crash reporting system specifically designed for embedded devices. EmbedWatch integrates fat pointer principles with remote attestation, efficiently addressing spatial memory errors across various memory segments, including stack, heap, and global variables. The system's notable feature is its vulnerability analysis capability, which precisely pinpoints the exact code segment responsible for an error, significantly enhancing error detection and resolution accuracy. We assess the effectiveness and practicality of EmbedWatch by evaluating realworld firmware and CWEs. We show that EmbedWatch accurately detects the vulnerability analysis of spatial memory errors in the analyzed firmware with a negligible overhead range (0.01% - 2.33%), geometric mean 0.228 +0.4% encryption protocol.