start-ver=1.4 cd-journal=joma no-vol= cd-vols= no-issue= article-no= start-page=417 end-page=431 dt-received= dt-revised= dt-accepted= dt-pub-year=2025 dt-pub=20251015 dt-online= en-article= kn-article= en-subject= kn-subject= en-title= kn-title=Evaluation of a Startup Program Identification for Efficient and Accurate IoT Security Investigations en-subtitle= kn-subtitle= en-abstract= kn-abstract=Not all file in firmware are executed while using Internet of Things (IoT) devices and hundreds to approximately a thousand executable and linkable format files exist in one firmware. Therefore, security investigations without prioritization may lead to investigate programs that are not executed while using IoT devices first. This has resulted in inefficient security investigations. To perform efficient security investigations, we proposed a method that can identify programs executed during the startup process. However, only two firmware were used for the evaluation which can only evaluate one of the two startup sequences in the OpenWrt-based firmware. In addition, security investigations to validate whether the proposed method addresses the problem of inefficient security investigations were limited to OpenWrt-based firmware. In this study, we use more firmware data for evaluation and validation. We use nine firmware not used in previous studies including startup methods that have not previously been used for evaluation. In addition, we increase the number of firmware used for validation to 225. The evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed method can identify with only few false positives. The validation demonstrates that efficiency can be improved and prioritizing investigations by considering the proposed method result is worthwhile. en-copyright= kn-copyright= en-aut-name=ShimamotoYuta en-aut-sei=Shimamoto en-aut-mei=Yuta kn-aut-name= kn-aut-sei= kn-aut-mei= aut-affil-num=1 ORCID= en-aut-name=PhinyodomJiratchaya en-aut-sei=Phinyodom en-aut-mei=Jiratchaya kn-aut-name= kn-aut-sei= kn-aut-mei= aut-affil-num=2 ORCID= en-aut-name=YoshimotoRyota en-aut-sei=Yoshimoto en-aut-mei=Ryota kn-aut-name= kn-aut-sei= kn-aut-mei= aut-affil-num=3 ORCID= en-aut-name=UekawaHiroyuki en-aut-sei=Uekawa en-aut-mei=Hiroyuki kn-aut-name= kn-aut-sei= kn-aut-mei= aut-affil-num=4 ORCID= en-aut-name=AkiyamaMitsuaki en-aut-sei=Akiyama en-aut-mei=Mitsuaki kn-aut-name= kn-aut-sei= kn-aut-mei= aut-affil-num=5 ORCID= en-aut-name=YamauchiToshihiro en-aut-sei=Yamauchi en-aut-mei=Toshihiro kn-aut-name= kn-aut-sei= kn-aut-mei= aut-affil-num=6 ORCID= affil-num=1 en-affil=Graduate School of Environmental, Life, Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University kn-affil= affil-num=2 en-affil=School of Engineering, Okayama University kn-affil= affil-num=3 en-affil=Graduate School of Environmental, Life, Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University kn-affil= affil-num=4 en-affil=NTT Social Informatics Laboratories kn-affil= affil-num=5 en-affil=NTT Social Informatics Laboratories kn-affil= affil-num=6 en-affil=Faculty of Environmental, Life, Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University kn-affil= en-keyword=Internet of Things kn-keyword=Internet of Things en-keyword=Firmware kn-keyword=Firmware en-keyword=Startup script kn-keyword=Startup script en-keyword=SysVinit kn-keyword=SysVinit END start-ver=1.4 cd-journal=joma no-vol= cd-vols= no-issue= article-no= start-page=213 end-page=231 dt-received= dt-revised= dt-accepted= dt-pub-year=2025 dt-pub=20250314 dt-online= en-article= kn-article= en-subject= kn-subject= en-title= kn-title=RKPM: Restricted Kernel Page Mechanism to Mitigate Privilege Escalation Attacks en-subtitle= kn-subtitle= en-abstract= kn-abstract=Kernel memory corruption attacks against operating systems exploit kernel vulnerabilities to overwrite kernel data. Kernel address space layout randomization makes it difficult to identify kernel data by randomizing their virtual address space. Control flow integrity (CFI) prevents unauthorized kernel code execution by verifying kernel function calls. However, these countermeasures do not prohibit writing to kernel data. If the virtual address of privileged information is specified and CFI is circumvented, the privileged information can be modified by a kernel memory corruption attack. In this paper, we propose a restricted kernel page mechanism (RKPM) to mitigate kernel memory corruption attacks by introducing restricted kernel pages to protect the kernel data specified in the kernel. The RKPM focuses on the fact that kernel memory corruption attacks attempt to read the virtual addresses around the privileged information. The RKPM adopts page table mapping handling and a memory protection key to control the read and write restrictions of the restricted kernel pages. This allows us to mitigate kernel memory corruption attacks by capturing reads to the restricted kernel page before the privileged information is overwritten. As an evaluation of the RKPM, we confirmed that it can mitigate privilege escalation attacks on the latest Linux kernel. We also measured that there was a certain overhead in the kernel performance. This study enhances kernel security by mitigating privilege escalation attacks through the use of software or hardware based restricted kernel pages. en-copyright= kn-copyright= en-aut-name=KuzunoHiroki en-aut-sei=Kuzuno en-aut-mei=Hiroki kn-aut-name= kn-aut-sei= kn-aut-mei= aut-affil-num=1 ORCID= en-aut-name=YamauchiToshihiro en-aut-sei=Yamauchi en-aut-mei=Toshihiro kn-aut-name= kn-aut-sei= kn-aut-mei= aut-affil-num=2 ORCID= affil-num=1 en-affil=Graduate School of Engineering, Kobe University kn-affil= affil-num=2 en-affil=Faculty of Environmental, Life, Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University kn-affil= END