498 research outputs found
Assessing and augmenting SCADA cyber security: a survey of techniques
SCADA systems monitor and control critical infrastructures of national importance such as power generation and distribution, water supply, transportation networks, and manufacturing facilities. The pervasiveness, miniaturisations and declining costs of internet connectivity have transformed these systems from strictly isolated to highly interconnected networks. The connectivity provides immense benefits such as reliability, scalability and remote connectivity, but at the same time exposes an otherwise isolated and secure system, to global cyber security threats. This inevitable transformation to highly connected systems thus necessitates effective security safeguards to be in place as any compromise or downtime of SCADA systems can have severe economic, safety and security ramifications. One way to ensure vital asset protection is to adopt a viewpoint similar to an attacker to determine weaknesses and loopholes in defences. Such mind sets help to identify and fix potential breaches before their exploitation. This paper surveys tools and techniques to uncover SCADA system vulnerabilities. A comprehensive review of the selected approaches is provided along with their applicability
Uncovering Vulnerable Industrial Control Systems from the Internet Core
Industrial control systems (ICS) are managed remotely with the help of
dedicated protocols that were originally designed to work in walled gardens.
Many of these protocols have been adapted to Internet transport and support
wide-area communication. ICS now exchange insecure traffic on an inter-domain
level, putting at risk not only common critical infrastructure but also the
Internet ecosystem (e.g., DRDoS~attacks).
In this paper, we uncover unprotected inter-domain ICS traffic at two central
Internet vantage points, an IXP and an ISP. This traffic analysis is correlated
with data from honeypots and Internet-wide scans to separate industrial from
non-industrial ICS traffic. We provide an in-depth view on Internet-wide ICS
communication. Our results can be used i) to create precise filters for
potentially harmful non-industrial ICS traffic, and ii) to detect ICS sending
unprotected inter-domain ICS traffic, being vulnerable to eavesdropping and
traffic manipulation attacks
Towards a Layered Architectural View for Security Analysis in SCADA Systems
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems support and control
the operation of many critical infrastructures that our society depend on, such
as power grids. Since SCADA systems become a target for cyber attacks and the
potential impact of a successful attack could lead to disastrous consequences
in the physical world, ensuring the security of these systems is of vital
importance. A fundamental prerequisite to securing a SCADA system is a clear
understanding and a consistent view of its architecture. However, because of
the complexity and scale of SCADA systems, this is challenging to acquire. In
this paper, we propose a layered architectural view for SCADA systems, which
aims at building a common ground among stakeholders and supporting the
implementation of security analysis. In order to manage the complexity and
scale, we define four interrelated architectural layers, and uses the concept
of viewpoints to focus on a subset of the system. We indicate the applicability
of our approach in the context of SCADA system security analysis.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Implementation of Secure DNP3 Architecture of SCADA System for Smart Grids
With the recent advances in the power grid system connecting to the internet, data sharing, and networking enables space for hackers to maliciously attack them based on their vulnerabilities. Vital stations in the smart grid are the generation, transmission, distribution, and customer substations are connected and controlled remotely by the network. Every substation is controlled by a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system which communicates on DNP3 protocol on Internet/IP which has many security vulnerabilities. This research will focus on Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3) communication which is used in the smart grid to communicate between the controller devices. We present the DNP3 SAv5 and design a secure architecture with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) on Asymmetric key encryption using a Certificate Authority (CA). The testbed provides a design architecture between customer and distribution substation and illustrates the verification of the public certificate. We have added a layer of security by giving a password to a private key file to avoid physical tampering of the devices at the customer substations. The simulation results show that the secure communication on the TLS layer provides confidentiality, integrity, and availability
Application of NTRU Cryptographic Algorithm for securing SCADA communication
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system is a control system which is widely used in Critical Infrastructure System to monitor and control industrial processes autonomously. Most of the SCADA communication protocols are vulnerable to various types of cyber-related attacks. The currently used security standards for SCADA communication specify the use of asymmetric cryptographic algorithms like RSA or ECC for securing SCADA communications. There are certain performance issues with cryptographic solutions of these specifications when applied to SCADA system with real-time constraints and hardware limitations. To overcome this issue, in this thesis we propose the use of a faster and light-weighted NTRU cryptographic algorithm for authentication and data integrity in securing SCADA communication. Experimental research conducted on ARMv6 based Raspberry Pi and Intel Core machine shows that cryptographic operations of NTRU is two to thirty five times faster than the corresponding RSA or ECC. Usage of NTRU algorithm reduces computation and memory overhead significantly making it suitable for SCADA systems with real-time constraints and hardware limitations
Security hardened remote terminal units for SCADA networks.
Remote terminal units (RTUs) are perimeter supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices that measure and control actual physical devices. Cyber security was largely ignored in SCADA for many years, and the cyber security issues that now face SCADA and DCS, specifically RTU security, are investigated in this research. This dissertation presents a new role based access control model designed specifically for RTUs and process control. The model is developed around the process control specific data element called a point, and point operations. The model includes: assignment constraints that limit the RTU operations that a specific role can be assigned and activation constraints that allow a security administrator to specify conditions when specific RTU roles or RTU permissions cannot be used. RTU enforcement of the new access control model depends on, and is supported by, the protection provided by an RTU\u27s operating system. This dissertation investigates two approaches for using minimal kernels to reduce potential vulnerabilities in RTU protection enforcement and create a security hardened RTU capable of supporting the new RTU access control model. The first approach is to reduce a commercial OS kernel to only those components needed by the RTU, removing any known or unknown vulnerabilities contained in the eliminated code and significantly reducing the size of the kernel. The second approach proposes using a microkernel that supports partitioning as the basis for an RTU specific operating system which isolates network related RTU software, the RTU attack surface, from critical RTU operational software such as control algorithms and analog and digital input and output. In experimental analysis of a prototype hardened RTU connected to real SCADA hardware, a reduction of over 50% was obtained in reducing a 2.4 Linux kernel to run on actual RTU hardware. Functional testing demonstrated that different users were able to carryout assigned tasks with the limited set of permissions provided by the security hardened RTU and a series of simulated insider attacks were prevented by the RTU role based access control system. Analysis of communication times indicated response times would be acceptable for many SCADA and DCS application areas. Investigation of a partitioning microkernel for an RTU identified the L4 microkernel as an excellent candidate. Experimental evaluation of L4 on real hardware found the IPC overhead for simulated critical RTU operations protected by L4 partitioning to be sufficiently small to warrant continued investigation of the approach
Cybersecurity analysis of a SCADA system under current standards, client requisites, and penetration testing
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are essential for monitoring and controlling a country's Critical Infrastructures (CI) such as electrical power grids, gas, water supply, and transportation services. These systems used to be mostly isolated and secure, but this is no longer true due to the use of wider and interconnected communication networks to reap benefits such as scalability, reliability, usability, and integration. This architectural change together with the critical importance of these systems made them desirable cyber-attack targets. Just as in other Information Technology (IT) systems, standards and best practices have been developed to provide guidance for SCADA developers to increase the security of their systems against cyber-attacks.With the assistance of EFACEC, this work provides an analysis of a SCADA system under current standards, client requisites, and testing of vulnerabilities in an actual prototype system. Our aim is to provide guidance by example on how to evaluate and improve the security of SCADA systems, using a basic prototype of EFACEC's ScateX# SCADA system, following both a theoretical and practical approach. For the theoretical approach, a list of the most commonly adopted ICS (Industrial Control Systems) and IT standards is compiled, and then sets of a generic client's cybersecurity requisites are analyzed and confronted with the prototype's specifications. A study of the system's architecture is also performed to identify vulnerabilities and non-compliances with both the client's requisites and the standards and, for the identified vulnerabilities, corrective and mitigation measures are suggested. For the practical approach, a threat model was developed to help identify desirable assets on SCADA systems and possible attack vectors that could allow access to such assets. Penetration tests were performed on the prototype in order to validate the attack vectors, to evaluate compliance, and to provide evidence of the effectiveness of the corrective measures
ICT Technologies, Standards and Protocols for Active Distribution Network Automation and Management
The concept of active distribution network (ADN) is evolved to address the high penetration of renewables in the distribution network. To leverage the benefits of ADN, effective communication and information technology is required. Various communication standards to facilitate standard-based communication in distribution network have been proposed in literature. This chapter presents various communication standards and technologies that can be employed in ADN. Among various communication standards, IEC 61850 standard has emerged as the de facto standard for power utility automation. IEC 61850-based information modeling for ADN entities has also been presented in this chapter. To evaluate the performance of ADN communication architecture, performance metrics and performance evaluation tools have also been presented in this chapter
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