FIRE: Faithful Integrated Reverse-engineering and Exploitation

Currently, cyber testing of cyber-physical systems (CPS) depends on digital twins of the system under test. However, digital twins are designed to showcase intended functionality, not unintended functionalities where vulnerabilities reside. Digital twins are also too slow and too complex for scalable vulnerability analyses. The Faithful Integrated Reverse-engineering and Exploitation (FIRE) program is developing tools and techniques to find, exploit, and patch vulnerabilities in CPS without the need for digital twins. FIRE sets out to prove that models and simulators with just enough fidelity are sufficient for cyber testing. This offers not only massive increases in testing scale and speed, but also the ability to analyze systems that do not have digital twins. FIRE aims to achieve these goals by transforming the identification, modeling, and simulation capabilities of critical physical, hardware, and software components. In making cyber-physical vulnerabilities more easily found and proven, FIRE will also expedite automated and iterative patches against CPS threats.