A Systematic Review of Semantic Firmware Bugs and Security Challenges in Distributed Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems
Hao LIU , Yucheng LIU , Bruno SILVA , Raphael Elikplim NKROW , Dutliff BOSHOFF , Lu ZHOU , Liquan CHEN , Gerhard Petrus HANCKE
Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPSs) are important in modern industry, with distributed architectures enabling scalability, flexibility, and real-time processing. However, traditional non-distributed ICPS security models fall short in addressing the complexities of these environments, where firmware security issues arising from bugs become paramount as functionality shifts to interconnected edge devices. Adopting a problem-oriented systematic synthesis approach, this article analyzes 67 core studies selected from an initial pool of 137 papers to investigate the root causes and impacts of Semantic Firmware Bugs (SFBs), which are subtle logical errors evading standard syntactic checks and pose significant risks that can potentially lead to unauthorized access and operational disruptions. This article presents a systematic review of SFB root causes in distributed ICPSs, analyzing their evolution from non-distributed to distributed settings and the resultant security challenges impacting confidentiality, integrity, and availability. We also classify SFBs in Distributed ICPS, evaluate mainstream detection and repair methods, and highlight limitations in distributed contexts. Finally, we propose future directions, including federated learning-based approaches, to enhance semantic firmware security in distributed ICPSs.
Industrial Cyber-physical System / Semantic Firmware Bug detection / Distributed Security
The Author(s) 2026.
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