627 research outputs found
Science Hackathons for Cyberphysical System Security Research: Putting CPS testbed platforms to good use
A challenge is to develop cyber-physical system scenarios that reflect the
diversity and complexity of real-life cyber-physical systems in the research
questions that they address. Time-bounded collaborative events, such as
hackathons, jams and sprints, are increasingly used as a means of bringing
groups of individuals together, in order to explore challenges and develop
solutions. This paper describes our experiences, using a science hackathon to
bring individual researchers together, in order to develop a common use-case
implemented on a shared CPS testbed platform that embodies the diversity in
their own security research questions. A qualitative study of the event was
conducted, in order to evaluate the success of the process, with a view to
improving future similar events
MiniCPS: A toolkit for security research on CPS Networks
In recent years, tremendous effort has been spent to modernizing
communication infrastructure in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) such as Industrial
Control Systems (ICS) and related Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
(SCADA) systems. While a great amount of research has been conducted on network
security of office and home networks, recently the security of CPS and related
systems has gained a lot of attention. Unfortunately, real-world CPS are often
not open to security researchers, and as a result very few reference systems
and topologies are available. In this work, we present MiniCPS, a CPS
simulation toolbox intended to alleviate this problem. The goal of MiniCPS is
to create an extensible, reproducible research environment targeted to
communications and physical-layer interactions in CPS. MiniCPS builds on
Mininet to provide lightweight real-time network emulation, and extends Mininet
with tools to simulate typical CPS components such as programmable logic
controllers, which use industrial protocols (Ethernet/IP, Modbus/TCP). In
addition, MiniCPS defines a simple API to enable physical-layer interaction
simulation. In this work, we demonstrate applications of MiniCPS in two example
scenarios, and show how MiniCPS can be used to develop attacks and defenses
that are directly applicable to real systems.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 code listin
Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) Security: State of the Art and Research Opportunities for Information Systems Academics
Attacks on cyber-physical systems (CPS) continue to grow in frequency. However, cybersecurity academics and practitioners have so far focused primarily on computer systems and networks rather than CPS. Given the alarming frequency with which cybercriminals attack CPS and the unique cyber-physical relationship in CPS, we propose that CPS security needs go beyond what purely computer and network security requires. Thus, we require more focused research on cybersecurity based on the cyber-physical relationship between various CPS components. In this paper, we stock of the current state of CPS security and identify research opportunities for information systems (IS) academics
Towards Resilient Cyber-Physical Energy Systems
In this paper, we develop a system-of-systems framework to address cyber-physical resilience, the ability to withstand the combined presence of both cyber attacks and physi-cal faults. This framework incorporates a definition of re-silience, a resilience metric as well as a resilient control de-sign methodology. The resilient control architecture utilizes a hybrid optimal control methodology combined with a dy-namic regulation market mechanism (DRMM), and is evalu-ated in the context of frequency regulation at a transmission grid. The framework enables the evaluation of both the clas-sical robust control properties and emerging resilient control properties under both cyber attacks and physical faults. The proposed framework is used to assess resilience of a Cyber-Physical Energy System (CPES) when subjected to both cyber and physical faults via DETERLab. DETERLab, a testbed capable of emulating high fidelity, cybersecure, net-worked systems, is used to construct critical scenarios with physical faults emulated in the form of generator outages and cyber faults emulated in the form of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Under these scenarios, the resilience and per-formance of a CPES that is comprised of 56 generators and 99 consumers is evaluated using the hybrid-DRMM control methodology
A Systematic Review of the State of Cyber-Security in Water Systems
Critical infrastructure systems are evolving from isolated bespoke systems to those that use general-purpose computing hosts, IoT sensors, edge computing, wireless networks and artificial intelligence. Although this move improves sensing and control capacity and gives better integration with business requirements, it also increases the scope for attack from malicious entities that intend to conduct industrial espionage and sabotage against these systems. In this paper, we review the state of the cyber-security research that is focused on improving the security of the water supply and wastewater collection and treatment systems that form part of the critical national infrastructure. We cover the publication statistics of the research in this area, the aspects of security being addressed, and future work required to achieve better cyber-security for water systems
Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey
The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to
ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability
issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid
(SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical
power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side
management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will
bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system.
For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time
consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built
on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG
systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue.
Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the
communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey
on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of
SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case
studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for
SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes
applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and
future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte
Cybersecurity of Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems: A Review
Industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPSs) manage critical infrastructures by
controlling the processes based on the "physics" data gathered by edge sensor
networks. Recent innovations in ubiquitous computing and communication
technologies have prompted the rapid integration of highly interconnected
systems to ICPSs. Hence, the "security by obscurity" principle provided by
air-gapping is no longer followed. As the interconnectivity in ICPSs increases,
so does the attack surface. Industrial vulnerability assessment reports have
shown that a variety of new vulnerabilities have occurred due to this
transition while the most common ones are related to weak boundary protection.
Although there are existing surveys in this context, very little is mentioned
regarding these reports. This paper bridges this gap by defining and reviewing
ICPSs from a cybersecurity perspective. In particular, multi-dimensional
adaptive attack taxonomy is presented and utilized for evaluating real-life
ICPS cyber incidents. We also identify the general shortcomings and highlight
the points that cause a gap in existing literature while defining future
research directions.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figure
Classifying resilience approaches for protecting smart grids against cyber threats
Smart grids (SG) draw the attention of cyber attackers due to their vulnerabilities, which are caused by the usage of heterogeneous communication technologies and their distributed nature. While preventing or detecting cyber attacks is a well-studied field of research, making SG more resilient against such threats is a challenging task. This paper provides a classification of the proposed cyber resilience methods against cyber attacks for SG. This classification includes a set of studies that propose cyber-resilient approaches to protect SG and related cyber-physical systems against unforeseen anomalies or deliberate attacks. Each study is briefly analyzed and is associated with the proper cyber resilience technique which is given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the Special Publication 800-160. These techniques are also linked to the different states of the typical resilience curve. Consequently, this paper highlights the most critical challenges for achieving cyber resilience, reveals significant cyber resilience aspects that have not been sufficiently considered yet and, finally, proposes scientific areas that should be further researched in order to enhance the cyber resilience of SG.Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA
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