1,628 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
Security Evaluation of Cyber-Physical Systems in Society- Critical Internet of Things
In this paper, we present evaluation of security
awareness of developers and users of cyber-physical systems. Our
study includes interviews, workshops, surveys and one practical
evaluation. We conducted 15 interviews and conducted survey with
55 respondents coming primarily from industry. Furthermore, we
performed practical evaluation of current state of practice for a
society-critical application, a commercial vehicle, and reconfirmed
our findings discussing an attack vector for an off-line societycritical
facility. More work is necessary to increase usage of security
strategies, available methods, processes and standards. The security
information, currently often insufficient, should be provided in the
user manuals of products and services to protect system users. We
confirmed it lately when we conducted an additional survey of
users, with users feeling as left out in their quest for own security
and privacy. Finally, hardware-related security questions begin to
come up on the agenda, with a general increase of interest and
awareness of hardware contribution to the overall cyber-physical
security. At the end of this paper we discuss possible
countermeasures for dealing with threats in infrastructures,
highlighting the role of authorities in this quest
xLED: Covert Data Exfiltration from Air-Gapped Networks via Router LEDs
In this paper we show how attackers can covertly leak data (e.g., encryption
keys, passwords and files) from highly secure or air-gapped networks via the
row of status LEDs that exists in networking equipment such as LAN switches and
routers. Although it is known that some network equipment emanates optical
signals correlated with the information being processed by the device
('side-channel'), intentionally controlling the status LEDs to carry any type
of data ('covert-channel') has never studied before. A malicious code is
executed on the LAN switch or router, allowing full control of the status LEDs.
Sensitive data can be encoded and modulated over the blinking of the LEDs. The
generated signals can then be recorded by various types of remote cameras and
optical sensors. We provide the technical background on the internal
architecture of switches and routers (at both the hardware and software level)
which enables this type of attack. We also present amplitude and frequency
based modulation and encoding schemas, along with a simple transmission
protocol. We implement a prototype of an exfiltration malware and discuss its
design and implementation. We evaluate this method with a few routers and
different types of LEDs. In addition, we tested various receivers including
remote cameras, security cameras, smartphone cameras, and optical sensors, and
also discuss different detection and prevention countermeasures. Our experiment
shows that sensitive data can be covertly leaked via the status LEDs of
switches and routers at a bit rates of 10 bit/sec to more than 1Kbit/sec per
LED
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