New software tools for safer infrastructure
The adoption of large-scale safety-critical systems (SCSs) to ensure safety and security in domains ranging from nuclear factories to oil refineries is crucial for the well-being of civilisation. The EU-funded project 'Critical software technology for an evolutionary partnership' (CRITICAL STEP) fostered long-term research collaboration among partners in software for SCSs. It sought to exploit off-the-shelf software components for the control of complex distributed infrastructures as worldwide growth for such infrastructures increases, along with the corresponding security challenges. To achieve its aims, the project team brought together four partners from university and research centres, as well as from small and medium enterprises. It developed three key tools in the field, the first of which was conceived for robustness testing of heterogeneous web services through a series of automatic and proper tests. The second tool, called software fault emulator, was designed to inject bugs in complex software systems to evaluate fault tolerance mechanisms and algorithms against faulty software components. Equally noteworthy was the third tool, a multicore injection tool to introduce hardware errors in multicore processors to assess how the application and operating systems can handle multicore errors. The tools were then tested in real-life scenarios in the field of air traffic management and airspace. The results demonstrated the success of the tools in achieving their objectives and in helping protect critical infrastructures using less expensive and more ubiquitous technology. Overall project findings have been disseminated through journals and conferences, as well as through the project website. These tools will undoubtedly help not only Europe but also the world in guarding against bugs, hackers and even terrorist threats to key infrastructures.
Keywords
Software technology, critical infrastructures, safety-critical systems, distributed infrastructures
