Supply Chain Exploitation of Secure ROS 2 Systems: A Proof-of-Concept on Autonomous Platform Compromise via Keystore Exfiltration
arXiv:2511.00140 · doi:10.1109/MILCOM64451.2025.11309897
Abstract
This paper presents a proof-of-concept supply chain attack against the Secure ROS 2 (SROS 2) framework, demonstrated on a Quanser QCar2 autonomous vehicle platform. A Trojan-infected Debian package modifies core ROS 2 security commands to exfiltrate newly generated keystore credentials via DNS in base64-encoded chunks to an attacker-controlled nameserver. Possession of these credentials enables the attacker to rejoin the SROS 2 network as an authenticated participant and publish spoofed control or perception messages without triggering authentication failures. We evaluate this capability on a secure ROS 2 Humble testbed configured for a four-stop-sign navigation routine using an Intel RealSense camera for perception. Experimental results show that control-topic injections can cause forced braking, sustained high-speed acceleration, and continuous turning loops, while perception-topic spoofing can induce phantom stop signs or suppress real detections. The attack generalizes to any data distribution service (DDS)-based robotic system using SROS 2, highlighting the need for both supply chain integrity controls and runtime semantic validation to safeguard autonomous systems against insider and impersonation threats.
Author-accepted version (preprint). Presented at IEEE MILCOM 2025 Workshops, WS07: 2nd Workshop on Security, Resilience, and Robustness of Systems and Software (SRRSS), Los Angeles, Oct 2025. 6 pages. Primary: cs.CR; cross-lists: cs.RO, cs.OS. Program: https://milcom2025.ieee-milcom.org/workshop/ws07-2nd-workshop-security-resilient-and-robustness-systems-and-software/program