A Design of Cyber-physical Production System Prototype Based on an Ethereum Private Network

The concept of cyber-physical production systems is highly discussed amongst researchers and industry experts, however, the implementation options for these systems rely mainly on obsolete technologies. Despite the fact that the blockchain is most often associated with cryptocurrency, it is fundamentally wrong to deny the universality of this technology and the prospects for its application in other industries. For example, in the insurance sector or in a number of identity verification services. This article discusses the deployment of the CPPS backbone network based on the Ethereum private blockchain system. The structure of the network is described as well as its interaction with the help of smart contracts, based on the consumption of cryptocurrency for various operations

Designing a Blockchain-Based Digital Twin for Cyber-Physical Production Systems

Trust in all processes on the shopfloor is crucial for the success of a production process, especially in cross company scenarios such as shared manufacturing, in which independent parties interact with each other. A cyber-physical production system (CPPS) contributes to the vision of a decentralized, self-configuring and flexible production. Digital twins (DTs) can visualize the material, information and financial flows in real time and improve the process transparency of such production systems. The efficiency of digital twins depends on the integrity of the provided data, especially if data is shared across company borders. Due to its characteristics such as immutability and transparency, blockchain technology (BCT) provides a basis for establishing the desired trust in the systems on the shopfloor. This paper proposes the design of a BCT-based DT in CPPS. The design is demonstrated by a prototype including smart contracts attached to a CPPS simulation model visualizing the information and material flow. Tasks are decentrally allocated, deployed and safely documented via blockchain. The demonstrator is revealing supplementary benefits in terms of transparency provided by the BCT. This paper further examines whether BCT can enrich existing solutions and provide a reliable information basis for profound data and process analysis

Mitigating Insider Threat Risks in Cyber-physical Manufacturing Systems

Cyber-Physical Manufacturing System (CPMS)—a next generation manufacturing system—seamlessly integrates digital and physical domains via the internet or computer networks. It will enable drastic improvements in production flexibility, capacity, and cost-efficiency. However, enlarged connectivity and accessibility from the integration can yield unintended security concerns. The major concern arises from cyber-physical attacks, which can cause damages to the physical domain while attacks originate in the digital domain. Especially, such attacks can be performed by insiders easily but in a more critical manner: Insider Threats. Insiders can be defined as anyone who is or has been affiliated with a system. Insiders have knowledge and access authentications of the system\u27s properties, therefore, can perform more serious attacks than outsiders. Furthermore, it is hard to detect or prevent insider threats in CPMS in a timely manner, since they can easily bypass or incapacitate general defensive mechanisms of the system by exploiting their physical access, security clearance, and knowledge of the system vulnerabilities. This thesis seeks to address the above issues by developing an insider threat tolerant CPMS, enhanced by a service-oriented blockchain augmentation and conducting experiments & analysis. The aim of the research is to identify insider threat vulnerabilities and improve the security of CPMS. Blockchain\u27s unique distributed system approach is adopted to mitigate the insider threat risks in CPMS. However, the blockchain limits the system performance due to the arbitrary block generation time and block occurrence frequency. The service-oriented blockchain augmentation is providing physical and digital entities with the blockchain communication protocol through a service layer. In this way, multiple entities are integrated by the service layer, which enables the services with less arbitrary delays while retaining their strong security from the blockchain. Also, multiple independent service applications in the service layer can ensure the flexibility and productivity of the CPMS. To study the effectiveness of the blockchain augmentation against insider threats, two example models of the proposed system have been developed: Layer Image Auditing System (LIAS) and Secure Programmable Logic Controller (SPLC). Also, four case studies are designed and presented based on the two models and evaluated by an Insider Attack Scenario Assessment Framework. The framework investigates the system\u27s security vulnerabilities and practically evaluates the insider attack scenarios. The research contributes to the understanding of insider threats and blockchain implementations in CPMS by addressing key issues that have been identified in the literature. The issues are addressed by EBIS (Establish, Build, Identify, Simulation) validation process with numerical experiments and the results, which are in turn used towards mitigating insider threat risks in CPMS

Proceedings of the Conference on Production Systems and Logistics: CPSL 2022

[no abstract available