In my master thesis I studied the security aspects of the IEEE 1588 protocol: Precision Time Protocol (PTP). What started as a threat analysis soon became a threat analysis, attack demonstrations and a suggestion for a complete security solution for the protocol. The short version of the article was presented in the ISPCS 2016 conference, and the full version can be found here.
What I found unique about my research wasn’t it’s results, although we did present several new vulnerabilities and proposed mitigations. The unique aspects were actually our method of research, as will be detailed explained in this post. The following chapters will summarize the research plan used in my thesis, alongside several examples for of the advantages it gained us, and the pitfalls we missed because of it. It is highly recommended to read the full article in order to better understand the next chapters.
Eyal Itkin 