The Path to Fault- and Intrusion-Resilient Manycore Systems on a Chip

The hardware computing landscape is changing. What used to be distributed systems can now be found on a chip with highly configurable, diverse, specialized and general purpose units. Such Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC) are used to control today's cyber-physical systems, being the building blocks of critical infrastructures. They are deployed in harsh environments and are connected to the cyberspace, which makes them exposed to both accidental faults and targeted cyberattacks. This is in addition to the changing fault landscape that continued technology scaling, emerging devices and novel application scenarios will bring. In this paper, we discuss how the very features, distributed, parallelized, reconfigurable, heterogeneous, that cause many of the imminent and emerging security and resilience challenges, also open avenues for their cure though SoC replication, diversity, rejuvenation, adaptation, and hybridization. We show how to leverage these techniques at different levels across the entire SoC hardware/software stack, calling for more research on the topic

A critical review of cyber-physical security for building automation systems

Modern Building Automation Systems (BASs), as the brain that enables the smartness of a smart building, often require increased connectivity both among system components as well as with outside entities, such as optimized automation via outsourced cloud analytics and increased building-grid integrations. However, increased connectivity and accessibility come with increased cyber security threats. BASs were historically developed as closed environments with limited cyber-security considerations. As a result, BASs in many buildings are vulnerable to cyber-attacks that may cause adverse consequences, such as occupant discomfort, excessive energy usage, and unexpected equipment downtime. Therefore, there is a strong need to advance the state-of-the-art in cyber-physical security for BASs and provide practical solutions for attack mitigation in buildings. However, an inclusive and systematic review of BAS vulnerabilities, potential cyber-attacks with impact assessment, detection & defense approaches, and cyber-secure resilient control strategies is currently lacking in the literature. This review paper fills the gap by providing a comprehensive up-to-date review of cyber-physical security for BASs at three levels in commercial buildings: management level, automation level, and field level. The general BASs vulnerabilities and protocol-specific vulnerabilities for the four dominant BAS protocols are reviewed, followed by a discussion on four attack targets and seven potential attack scenarios. The impact of cyber-attacks on BASs is summarized as signal corruption, signal delaying, and signal blocking. The typical cyber-attack detection and defense approaches are identified at the three levels. Cyber-secure resilient control strategies for BASs under attack are categorized into passive and active resilient control schemes. Open challenges and future opportunities are finally discussed.Comment: 38 pages, 7 figures, 6 tables, submitted to Annual Reviews in Contro

Autonomous Energy Grids

Current frameworks to monitor, control, and optimize large-scale energy systems are becoming increasingly inadequate because of significantly high penetration levels of variable generation and distributed energy resources being integrated into electric power systems; the deluge of data from pervasive metering of energy grids; and a variety of new market mechanisms, including multilevel ancillary services. This paper outlines the concept of autonomous energy grids (AEGs). These systems are supported by a scalable, reconfigurable, and self-organizing information and control infrastructure, are extremely secure and resilient (self-healing), and can self-optimize in real time to ensure economic and reliable performance while systematically integrating energy in all forms. AEGs rely on cellular building blocks that can self-optimize when isolated from a larger grid and participate in optimal operation when interconnected to a larger grid. This paper describes the key concepts and research necessary in the broad domains of optimization theory, control theory, big data analytics, and complex system theory and modeling to realize the AEG vision

GRIDKIT: Pluggable overlay networks for Grid computing

A `second generation' approach to the provision of Grid middleware is now emerging which is built on service-oriented architecture and web services standards and technologies. However, advanced Grid applications have significant demands that are not addressed by present-day web services platforms. As one prime example, current platforms do not support the rich diversity of communication `interaction types' that are demanded by advanced applications (e.g. publish-subscribe, media streaming, peer-to-peer interaction). In the paper we describe the Gridkit middleware which augments the basic service-oriented architecture to address this particular deficiency. We particularly focus on the communications infrastructure support required to support multiple interaction types in a unified, principled and extensible manner-which we present in terms of the novel concept of pluggable overlay networks

Failure Analysis in Next-Generation Critical Cellular Communication Infrastructures

The advent of communication technologies marks a transformative phase in critical infrastructure construction, where the meticulous analysis of failures becomes paramount in achieving the fundamental objectives of continuity, security, and availability. This survey enriches the discourse on failures, failure analysis, and countermeasures in the context of the next-generation critical communication infrastructures. Through an exhaustive examination of existing literature, we discern and categorize prominent research orientations with focuses on, namely resource depletion, security vulnerabilities, and system availability concerns. We also analyze constructive countermeasures tailored to address identified failure scenarios and their prevention. Furthermore, the survey emphasizes the imperative for standardization in addressing failures related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the ambit of the sixth-generation (6G) networks, accounting for the forward-looking perspective for the envisioned intelligence of 6G network architecture. By identifying new challenges and delineating future research directions, this survey can help guide stakeholders toward unexplored territories, fostering innovation and resilience in critical communication infrastructure development and failure prevention

Effective Management of Energy Internet in Renewable Hybrid Microgrids : A Secured Data Driven Resilient Architecture

This paper proposes a two-layer in-depth secured management architecture for the optimal operation of energy internet in hybrid microgrids considering wind turbines, photovoltaics, fuel cell unit, and microturbines. In the physical layer of the proposed architecture, the operation of the grid is formulated as a single objective problem that is solved using teacher learning-based optimization (TLBO). Regarding the cyber layer of the proposed architecture, a two-level intrusion detection system (IDS) is proposed to detect various cyber-attacks (i.e. Sybil attacks, spoofing attacks, false data injection attacks) on wireless-based advanced metering infrastructures. The sequential probability ratio testing (SPRT) approach is utilized in both levels of the proposed IDS to detect cyber-attacks based on a sequence of anomalies rather than only one piece of evidence. The feasibility and performance of the proposed architecture are examined on IEEE 33-bus test system and the results are provided for both islanded and grid-connected operation modes.©2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

The Path to Fault- and Intrusion-Resilient Manycore Systems on a Chip

peer reviewedThe hardware computing landscape is changing. What used to be distributed systems can now be found on a chip with highly configurable, diverse, specialized and general purpose units. Such Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC) are used to control today's cyber-physical systems, being the building blocks of critical infrastructures. They are deployed in harsh environments and are connected to the cyberspace, which makes them exposed to both accidental faults and targeted cyberattacks. This is in addition to the changing fault landscape that continued technology scaling, emerging devices and novel application scenarios will bring. In this paper, we discuss how the very features - distributed, parallelized, reconfigurable, heterogeneous - that cause many of the imminent and emerging security and resilience challenges, also open avenues for their cure though SoC replication, diversity, rejuvenation, adaptation, and hybridization. We show how to leverage these techniques at different levels across the entire SoC hardware/software stack, calling for more research on the topic