Investigating Security Threats in Multi-Tenant ROS 2 Systems

Abstract

Robot Operating System (ROS) has been widely used to develop robotic applications. The first generation of ROS generally lacks security features, and ROS 2 is introduced with security support. However, security concerns still exist for running ROS in practical multi-tenant environments. In this paper, we conduct an in-depth investigation into the security of ROS 2. We focus on vulnerabilities in ROS nodes and topics and intend to explore methods to break the isolation and security mechanisms systematically. We devise a set of strategies that can be exploited by attackers to escalate privilege or cause information leakage in a multi-tenant environment. These attacks can bypass existing isolation and security mechanisms, including ROS 2's native security module. To validate our findings, we employ simulations across various real-world scenarios to demonstrate how attackers could exploit these vulnerabilities to bypass existing security mechanisms. Finally, we present several defense practices to mitigate these identified threats.