Master Thesis Proposal

1 Problem Statement

Previous studies have exposed significant security weaknesses in ROS and ROS 2, including inadequate access control, privilege escalation, information leakage, and vulnerabilities in multi-tenant deployments [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. However, important questions remain about the security of Space ROS and the practical consequences of exploiting vulnerabilities in ROS-based robotic systems. In particular, existing research leaves room for further investigation into how these vulnerabilities affect real robotic operations, beyond theoretical analysis or isolated software testing. Moreover, since ROS security is currently insufficient alone, there is a need to improve existing protection mechanisms.

2 Project Plan

1. Literature Review: The student will study ROS, ROS 2 and Space ROS,
   learning about prior literature in offensive security to identify the weaknesses of ROS.
2. ROS Testbed: The student will setup a ROS/ROS 2/Space ROS testbed,
   either running pre-existing simulated environment or testing a physical
   rover.
3. Vulnerability and Impact Assessment: The student will investigate designlevel vulnerabilities in ROS, including its DDS-based security layer, and assess how malicious, unauthenticated ROS packets could affect a robotic system. Particular attention will be given to whether combining seemingly benign node commands could trigger harmful physical behaviors, such as battery overheating, hardware damage, or equipment failure.
4. Experimental Evaluation: The student will evaluate the proposed attacks
   on the ROS testbed.

3 Ideal Background

You are interested in cyber-physical systems security and privacy. This project builds upon research works authored by the supervisor (Marco Casagrande). You will have a chance to test your skills, add an impactful project to your CV, and gain hands-on experience with protocol security and the security challenges of industrial and space robotics. Relevant Skills. Proficiency in programming and scripting languages, such
as Python and C++. Basic knowledge of security and privacy, wireless networks, and cyber-physical systems. Optionally, experience with ROS and robotics.

4 Thesis Supervisor

Marco Casagrande is a postdoc in cybersecurity at Orebro University. He specializes in Android security and reverse engineering. He is passionate about hands-on, hacking-oriented research. In addition to his academic publications, he has been invited to speak at several prominent hacking conferences, including Black Hat USA, DEF CON, and Hardwear.io. He is deeply involved in bug hunting, reporting vulnerabilities to market leaders such as Google, Xiaomi, and the FIDO Alliance.

References

[1] Wentao Chen et al. “Understanding the Internet-Wide Vulnerability Landscape for ROS-based Robotic Vehicles”. In: Proceedings of the Symposium on Vehicle Security & Privacy. Internet Society, 2024. doi: 10 . 14722 / vehiclesec.2024.23018. url: https://www.ndsssymposium.org/wpcontent/uploads/vehiclesec2024-18-paper.pdf.
[2] Gelei Deng et al. “On the (In)Security of Secure ROS2”. In: Proceedings
of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications
Security. Association for Computing Machinery, 2022, pp. 739–753. doi:
10.1145/3548606.3560681. url: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/
3548606.3560681.
[3] V´ıctor Mayoral-Vilches et al. “Can ROS be Used Securely in Industry? Red
Teaming ROS-Industrial”. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.08211 (2020). doi:
10. 48550/ arXiv.2009 .08211. url: https: //arxiv .org /abs/ 2009. 08211.
[4] Yash Patel, Parag H. Rughani, and Dhruvil Desai. “Analyzing Security
Vulnerability and Forensic Investigation of ROS2: A Case Study”. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Robotics and Artificial
Intelligence. Association for Computing Machinery, 2022, pp. 6–12. doi:
10.1145/3573910.3573912. url: https://doi.org/10.1145/3573910.
3573912.
[5] Lichen Xia, Xing Gao, and Weisong Shi. “Investigating Security Threats
in Multi-Tenant ROS 2 Systems”. In: 2025 IEEE International Conference
on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). 2025, pp. 16441–16448. doi: 10 .
1109/ICRA55743.2025.11127490. url: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/
document/11127490.