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THE ST PODCAST
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The audio versions of the posts we publish on The ST Blog. Listen at your
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Wayfinding Mark System from NFC Forum, 4 Catchy Images to Bring NFC to the Rest
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In Application Examples, Internet of Things, Smart Industry
PERCEPIO DEVALERT AND STM32: A SANDBOX AND TOOLS TO CRUSH FRUSTRATING BUGS AND
MALICIOUS ATTACKS
June 30, 2022
Percepio, an authorized partner and member of the ST Partner Program, just
launched DevAlert® Sandbox, a new way to experiment with the company’s DevAlert
solution. In a nutshell, DevAlert can remotely diagnose and debug applications
running on STM32 microcontrollers thanks to exceptionally detailed logs and
cloud computing. Hence, teams can detect issues early and deploy a patch over
the air before dramatic consequences occur. Additionally, developers can use
DevAlert’s general monitoring framework during testing and deployment to detect
anomalies or even cybersecurity attacks. Percepio used ST’s B-L475E-IOT01A
Discovery kit for IoT as a reference during the project’s inception.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
* Crushing Bugs in the Age of Softwarization
* How It Started and How It’s Going?
* What New Challenges Developers Face Today?
* Smoothing the Rough Development Ride
* How Can Alerts, Warnings, and Traces Help?
* How Does DevAlert Minimize RAM Usage and Data Uploads with a Ring Buffer?
* How DevAlert Can Help With Cybersecurity Monitoring?
* Encouraging Experimentation with a Virtual STM32 System
* What Is DevAlert Sandbox?
* Why Start With DevAlert Sandbox?
* Shortening the Time to Market
* How Does DevAlert Work with ST Technologies?
* What Does the Cloud Bring?
CRUSHING BUGS IN THE AGE OF SOFTWARIZATION
HOW IT STARTED AND HOW IT’S GOING?
Since the first official “bug” in 1947, caused by a moth lodged into a hardware
relay inside Harvard’s Mark II electromechanical computer, errors and glitches
have plagued code. A 2002 study by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) established that, at the time, bugs cost the U.S. economy
about 60 billion dollars annually. Corrected for inflation, this would amount
today to 95 billion dollars. However, this figure is most likely far higher.
Indeed, since 2002, societies have been relying a lot more on software. Mobile
products, cloud services, and smart vehicles, homes, or cities testify to
“softwarization.” The term, coined in 20161, designates a tendency to prioritize
software solutions rather than create new hardware.
WHAT NEW CHALLENGES DEVELOPERS FACE TODAY?
Additionally, a paper published in 2016 by The Journal of Systems and Software2
showed that many bugs, especially those with more than two conditions, avoided
internal testing procedures. Developers could have caught them before releasing
their program but didn’t have the testing protocols to spot them. As software
gets increasingly complex, testing for every single-use case and code branch is
often impossible. For instance, thread switching in real-time operating systems
and parallelism thanks to new multicore MCUs create unique challenges. Moreover,
with the advent of machine learning at the edge, unexpected behaviors are more
common, and the need to correct them is ever more critical. Therefore, a tool
like Percepio DevAlert (DevAlert) represents a solution to this problem.
SMOOTHING THE ROUGH DEVELOPMENT RIDE
HOW CAN ALERTS, WARNINGS, AND TRACES HELP?
Developers use DevAlert by calling API functions that generate an alert when an
issue is detected. The warnings include an error code, a message string,
variables or register values, and the most recent trace. The system then sends
this content to a probe, the cloud, or stores them locally until developers grab
them with a smartphone or laptop. Programmers can then use Percepio’s
Tracealyzer® to study traces and determine what went wrong through its
visualization tools. Since developers can integrate alerts within their code
that handles errors or exceptions, they can more rapidly bring DevAlert into
their workflow. The framework is thus relatively straightforward as it doesn’t
necessitate a code rewrite.
HOW DOES DEVALERT MINIMIZE RAM USAGE AND DATA UPLOADS WITH A RING BUFFER?
At its core, DevAlert uses a ring buffer that constantly logs details in the
memory allocated by the program. As a result, using the trace buffer only
requires a few kilobytes of RAM, and cloud uploads only happen after an anomaly.
Hence, when an error occurs, the system already has tons of information on what
was happening. Additionally, DevAlert doesn’t constantly upload to the cloud,
therefore saving significant bandwidth. After ten years of work, Percepio
significantly optimized its solution on STM32 to only use between four bytes to
16 bytes of RAM per event, with a majority only requiring around eight bytes.
DevAlert can thus log thousands of events per second without negatively
impacting performances.
Comparatively, most other competing trace recorders need between 16 bytes and 32
bytes per event. Indeed, the ring buffer enables a smaller RAM requirement as
data is constantly overwritten until required. The system also transfers events
to the flash to save information before a hard reboot. As a result, Percepio’s
solution can fit in many systems, including those with tight memory constraints.
Moreover, storing hundreds or thousands of events becomes far more manageable
and primarily a function of the flash instead of the RAM. Developers can thus
have a comprehensive analysis of their program and figure out how to optimize
it. They can also monitor more aspects of their applications to detect a broader
range of abnormal behaviors.
HOW DEVALERT CAN HELP WITH CYBERSECURITY MONITORING?
One example of what developers can monitor with DevAlert is security attacks.
The framework itself doesn’t provide automatic detection of cyberattacks.
However, it is flexible enough to allow the detection of security-related
anomalies. For instance, developers can monitor the network stack and login
attempts. Numerous erroneous login attempts would often be a tell-tale sign of a
brute force attack and atypical requests could point to denial-of-service
attacks. Similarly, DevAlert may rapidly detect corrupt stacks, which could
point to the exploitation of a remote code execution vulnerability, and ensure
developers spot and quickly patch the issue. The framework also uses SecureFault
exemptions after a TrustZone violation on an STM32U5 or STM32L5.
ENCOURAGING EXPERIMENTATION WITH A VIRTUAL STM32 SYSTEM
WHAT IS DEVALERT SANDBOX?
A representation of DevAlert Sandbox
One of the best ways to get started with DevAlert is to use DevAlert Sandbox, a
pre-packaged environment in the cloud. Users can learn from the demo
applications, an elevator controller running on a simulated STM32F4. It is
possible to tweak code directly within the environment, which contains an
Eclipse IDE, a GCC toolchain, and a QEMU simulator. Developers can thus see what
warnings would look like, how the system would run, and how changes would impact
the program. Percepio chose the elevator example because it’s a very common
class of embedded systems and lends itself to practical visualization.
WHY START WITH DEVALERT SANDBOX?
Since all compilation operations run on the cloud server, the system works on
any modern browser and operating system. However, the cloud version doesn’t
preserve code edits between sessions. Hence, a virtual machine image is also
available for download. It allows developers to run the demo locally and store
edits more easily. Users can sign up for DevAlert Sandbox for free. Once
engineers are ready, they can copy their code changes to their IDE and run it on
their STM32 microcontroller. The default installation comes with built-in
anomalies that developers can run as soon as they log in for the first time and
a set of introduction videos.
SHORTENING THE TIME TO MARKET
HOW DOES DEVALERT WORK WITH ST TECHNOLOGIES?
The DevAlert Dashboard
After experimenting with DevAlert Sandbox, developers will want to move to their
STM32 system. One way to quickly test DevAlert on a physical solution is to use
the B-L475E-IOT01A Discovery kit, which supports STLINK-V3. Percepio supported
STLINK-V3 as soon as it launched, thus ensuring their customers enjoyed faster
speeds and new features. Additionally, the company went a step further by
providing an Eclipse plugin for STM32CubeIDE, our first free IDE with
STM32CubeMX integrated. The plugin makes it easier to use Tracealyzer within
ST’s development environment. DevAlert also uses cloud infrastructures to help
engineers keep track of bugs or specific information, opening the system to more
than just error detection.
WHAT DOES THE CLOUD BRING?
Percepio uses the cloud to sort issues using a “Classification Engine.” Before
the information reaches developers, the server processes it to highlight any new
or potentially essential warnings on the DevAlert Dashboard. As a result, teams
avoid “alert fatigue” when receiving messages from a large fleet and can better
spot important messages. Seeing how many times an anomaly takes place can also
help with prioritization. Furthermore, using a cloud facilitates information
sharing between teams, even when DevAlert is only running locally in a test lab.
DevAlert can also use the cloud to track sensor information to check for
unforeseen conditions. For instance, programmers could detect if people
accidentally press a button or find a flaw in the interface.
* Discover Percepio DevAlert
* Check out the B-L475E-IOT01A
1. Sevil Dräxler, Manuel Peuster, Holger Karl, Michael Bredel, Johannes
Lessmann, Thomas Soenen, Wouter Tavernier, Sharon Mendel-Brin, George
Xilouris. 2016. “SONATA: Service Programming and Orchestration for
Virtualized Software Networks”. 2017. IEEE International Conference on
Communications Workshops. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCW.2017.7962785 ↩︎
2. Domenico Cotroneo, Roberto Pietrantuono, Stefano Russo, Kishor Trivedi. “How
do bugs surface? A comprehensive study on the characteristics of software
bugs manifestation”. 2016. Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 113:
27-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2015.11.021. ↩︎
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THE ST PODCAST
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The audio versions of the posts we publish on The ST Blog. Listen at your
leisure and learn more about what makes technologies great and innovations
meaningful. Get more from technology to get more from life with
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Wayfinding Mark System from NFC Forum, 4 Catchy Images to Bring NFC to the Rest
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Wayfinding Mark System from NFC Forum, 4 Catchy Images to Bring NFC to the Rest
of the World
bySTMicroelectronics
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Wayfinding Mark System from NFC Forum, 4 Catchy Images to Bring NFC to the Rest
of the World
June 9, 2022
STMicroelectronics
STM32 Embedded Displays: 1st HD Screen With STM32H7 So Projects of All Sizes Can
Display Beautiful GUIs
May 10, 2022
STMicroelectronics
embeNET and STM32WL: 6TiSCH Based Mesh Network Overcomes Big Challenges Plaguing
the Internet of Things
May 5, 2022
STMicroelectronics
NeoChrom GPU, New 2.5D Accelerator With Massive Hardware Optimizations for Rich
UIs on STM32
May 2, 2022
STMicroelectronics
TouchGFX 4.19: 2 New Features That Make Working with Texts and Graphs a Breeze
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