This is January 2020 issue of monthly TRON Forum mail magazine.
Thanks to the contribution of many, 2019 TRON Symposium was held successfuly in 2019, the 35th anniversary year since TRON Project started in 1984. I would like to thank many people who have cooperated with the symposium and those who visited the venue. The theme of 2019 TRON Symposium (TRONSHOW) was "Super & Safe City".
Many international events will be held in the year 2020 in Tokyo. World attention lands on Tokyo. I would like to contribute to Tokyo in 2020 using the results of TRON Project R&D activities such as open data,IoT, and others.
Regarding "open data", 4th Open Data Challenge for Public Transportation in Tokyo is being held with the additional co-sponsors of IT Strategic Headquarters, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The contest promotes the development of various apps that help meet the needs of the visitors who navigate in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area where many international events will be held. This is facilitated by offering data provided by the public transportation operators who are members of ODPT. Total amount of prizes of the fourth Challenge will be three million Japanese YEN. The final deadline of submissions of works to the contest is Oct 15, 2020. However, we expect many works to be available to the public before the deadline, and that they help the travelers who will move in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area.
In the IoT arena, TRON Forum has released the specification and reference source code of μT-Kernel 3.0 on the first day of 2019 TRON Symposium (TRONSHOW). This is a successor to μT-Kernel 2.0 which became the basis of IEEE Standard for Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for Small-Scale Embedded Systems, IEEE 2050-2018, suitable for IoT edge nodes. TRON Project has used GitHub for the first time to make the information of μT-Kernel 3.0 available to the public. Releasing information on GitHub which is used by many developers every day should bring in the contribution of world-wide volunteers to advance μT-Kernel 3.0 in addition to the work done by TRON Forum T3WG (Working Group) that is in charge of the development of TRON OS in the T3-generation.
The opening of TRON IoT Vulnerability Advisory Center was announced at 2019 TRON Symposium. IoT has come out of research labs and is now used in the real world as useful applications. Vulnerabilities in IoT systems such as edge nodes and clouds will affect people's lives and activities of enterprises. Dealing head on with this issue appropriately is an important responsibility for TRON Forum which promotes TRON Project that has produced RTOS family that holds the topmost share in the embedded systems market.
I would like to offer solutions to the various issues identified in 2019 TRON Symposium in collaboration with the parties who help TRON Project. I appreciate your continuing contribution to TRON Project in 2020.
Ken Sakamura
Thank you to those who came to "2019 TRON Symposium-TRONSHOW-" in December.
2019 TRON Symposium (TRONSHOW) was held in Tokyo Midtown Hall, Roppongi, Tokyo sucessfully on December 11-13, 2019. The theme this time was "Super & Safe City". This theme reflects the compilation of all the concepts and projects which TRON Project has tackled before.: Aggregate Computing, Open IoT, the Internet of Services (IoS), open data of public sectors, open data of public transportation, Free Mobility Assistance Project, Enableware, smart house, smart building, omotenashi (hospitality) cloud, traceability, etc. There were many sessions during the three day symposium where visitors could learn the past achievement and future direction of TRON Project.
Prior to 2019 TRON Symposium, TRON Enableware Symposum, TEPS 32nd, was held at INIAD hall in Akabanedai campus of Toyo University on December 7, 2019. The main theme was "Disaster Medicine in the Age of the IoT ＋AI". Prof. Ken Sakamura gave the keynote. TEPS invited Naoto Morimura M.D. Ph.D, professor of the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo this year. Prof. Morimura has been involved many disaster medicine cases in and outside Japan including the disaster medicine after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Through Prof. Morimura’s speech and panel discussion that followed, we could deepen our understanding of the role of IoT and AI technologies for disaster medicine and how we can take advantage of them.
Official Website of TRON Symposium (TRONSHOW)
https://www.tronshow.org/
Public release of the specification and source code of μT-Kernel 3.0 by TRON Forum
TRON Forum has established the specification of μT-Kernel 3.0 which is fully upward compatible with “IEEE 2050-2018,” the international standard of OS specification for IoT edge nodes, adopted by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The specification and source code has been released to the general public on the TRON Forum website and GitHub since December 11, 2019.
“IEEE 2050-2018” is international standard specification adopted by IEEE and TRON Project members’ original contributions remain in the standard very much. This specification satisfies the following requirements.
Target small-scale embedded systems that make up many IoT devices
Easy optimization and customization of implementation
High portability and distributability of middleware and device driver
Operation on a single chip microprocessor including 16-bit CPUs, without a memory management unit (MMU), with a small amount of ROM/RAM
Additional features of μT-Kernel 3.0 are as follows.
It is compliant with IEEE Standard 2050-2018 and has high compatibility with μT-Kernel 2.0.
Source code has been reviewed and rewritten so that porting to to latest microprocessors has become easier.
It is not tied to particular development environment, and is usable with many such environments.
The source code of μT-Kernel 3.0 is released as open source under the condition of T-License. The source released on December 11, 2019 targets the hardware of IoT-Engine with ARM Cortex-M3 CPU.
The specification is available fromt the TRON Forum webpage that publishes various specifications. The source code is available on GitHub as well as from the source code download page of TRON Forum website. Please refer to the following URLs to use them.
TRON Forum open specifiation download page
https://www.tron.org/specifications/
TRON Forum source code download page
https://www.tron.org/download/?language=en
GitHub(TRON Forum)
https://github.com/tron-forum
Alert regarding "URGENT/11" vulnerabilities of Interpeak IP Stack.
Advisories concerning “URGENT/11”, the set of vulnerabilities of Interpeak IP Stack
TRON Forum has established TRON IoT Vulnerability Advisory Center to collect and disseminate security advisories concerning vulnerabilities of the middleware products for TRON RTOS family (T-Kernel, μT-Kernel, T2EX, and ITRON specification RTOS, etc.) and OS kernel themselves. The Center also handles secuity vulnerability information on other OSs and their middleware products including "URGENT/11" of Interpeak IP Stack.
Regarding ITRON, TRON Forum only publishes its specification. Many parties implement it in different ways. So, TRON Forum cannot be responsible for the vulnerabilities of various implementaions of ITRON Specification OS. However, to help the users of such OSs, TRON Forum has preapared the TIVAC website.
TCP/IP protocol stack that is offered as part of T-Kernel 2.0 Extension (T2EX) is based on NetBSD protocol stack and has no relation to the IP stack of former Interpeak that is the subject of "URGENT/11" vulnerabilities.
However, we would like to remind members that proper care should be taken by consulting the latest security notices if a TCP/IP stack from a third party is used in your application irrespective of whether you use TRON RTOS family or not.
TRON Forum appreciates to receive any information on "Urgent/11" and other vulnerabilities related to third party products for TRON RTOS family.
■ TRON Forum: Security Advisorirs site
https://www.tron.org/ja/vulnerability/
■ U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Department of Homeland Security ICS Advisory (ICSA-19-274-01) Interpeak IPnet TCP/IP Stack
ICS Advisory (ICSA-19-274-01)
Interpeak Dipnet TCP/IP Stack
https://www.us-cert.gov/ics/advisories/icsa-19-274-01
■ The advisory regarding "Urgent/11" by ARMIS.
https://www.armis.com/urgent11/
