1,116 research outputs found
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
CyberForce: A Federated Reinforcement Learning Framework for Malware Mitigation
Recent research has shown that the integration of Reinforcement Learning (RL)
with Moving Target Defense (MTD) can enhance cybersecurity in
Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. Nevertheless, the practicality of existing
work is hindered by data privacy concerns associated with centralized data
processing in RL, and the unsatisfactory time needed to learn right MTD
techniques that are effective against a rising number of heterogeneous zero-day
attacks. Thus, this work presents CyberForce, a framework that combines
Federated and Reinforcement Learning (FRL) to collaboratively and privately
learn suitable MTD techniques for mitigating zero-day attacks. CyberForce
integrates device fingerprinting and anomaly detection to reward or penalize
MTD mechanisms chosen by an FRL-based agent. The framework has been deployed
and evaluated in a scenario consisting of ten physical devices of a real IoT
platform affected by heterogeneous malware samples. A pool of experiments has
demonstrated that CyberForce learns the MTD technique mitigating each attack
faster than existing RL-based centralized approaches. In addition, when various
devices are exposed to different attacks, CyberForce benefits from knowledge
transfer, leading to enhanced performance and reduced learning time in
comparison to recent works. Finally, different aggregation algorithms used
during the agent learning process provide CyberForce with notable robustness to
malicious attacks.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure
IoT Health Devices: Exploring Security Risks in the Connected Landscape
The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) spans decades, and the same can be said for its inclusion in healthcare. The IoT is an attractive target in medicine; it offers considerable potential in expanding care. However, the application of the IoT in healthcare is fraught with an array of challenges, and also, through it, numerous vulnerabilities that translate to wider attack surfaces and deeper degrees of damage possible to both consumers and their confidence within health systems, as a result of patient-specific data being available to access. Further, when IoT health devices (IoTHDs) are developed, a diverse range of attacks are possible. To understand the risks in this new landscape, it is important to understand the architecture of IoTHDs, operations, and the social dynamics that may govern their interactions. This paper aims to document and create a map regarding IoTHDs, lay the groundwork for better understanding security risks in emerging IoTHD modalities through a multi-layer approach, and suggest means for improved governance and interaction. We also discuss technological innovations expected to set the stage for novel exploits leading into the middle and latter parts of the 21st century
Machine Learning in IoT Security:Current Solutions and Future Challenges
The future Internet of Things (IoT) will have a deep economical, commercial
and social impact on our lives. The participating nodes in IoT networks are
usually resource-constrained, which makes them luring targets for cyber
attacks. In this regard, extensive efforts have been made to address the
security and privacy issues in IoT networks primarily through traditional
cryptographic approaches. However, the unique characteristics of IoT nodes
render the existing solutions insufficient to encompass the entire security
spectrum of the IoT networks. This is, at least in part, because of the
resource constraints, heterogeneity, massive real-time data generated by the
IoT devices, and the extensively dynamic behavior of the networks. Therefore,
Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) techniques, which are able to
provide embedded intelligence in the IoT devices and networks, are leveraged to
cope with different security problems. In this paper, we systematically review
the security requirements, attack vectors, and the current security solutions
for the IoT networks. We then shed light on the gaps in these security
solutions that call for ML and DL approaches. We also discuss in detail the
existing ML and DL solutions for addressing different security problems in IoT
networks. At last, based on the detailed investigation of the existing
solutions in the literature, we discuss the future research directions for ML-
and DL-based IoT security
Security Engineering of Patient-Centered Health Care Information Systems in Peer-to-Peer Environments: Systematic Review
Background: Patient-centered health care information systems (PHSs) enable patients to take control and become knowledgeable about their own health, preferably in a secure environment. Current and emerging PHSs use either a centralized database, peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, or distributed ledger technology for PHS deployment. The evolving COVID-19 decentralized Bluetooth-based tracing systems are examples of disease-centric P2P PHSs. Although using P2P technology for the provision of PHSs can be flexible, scalable, resilient to a single point of failure, and inexpensive for patients, the use of health information on P2P networks poses major security issues as users must manage information security largely by themselves. Objective: This study aims to identify the inherent security issues for PHS deployment in P2P networks and how they can be overcome. In addition, this study reviews different P2P architectures and proposes a suitable architecture for P2P PHS deployment. Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) reporting guidelines. Thematic analysis was used for data analysis. We searched the following databases: IEEE Digital Library, PubMed, Science Direct, ACM Digital Library, Scopus, and Semantic Scholar. The search was conducted on articles published between 2008 and 2020. The Common Vulnerability Scoring System was used as a guide for rating security issues. Results: Our findings are consolidated into 8 key security issues associated with PHS implementation and deployment on P2P networks and 7 factors promoting them. Moreover, we propose a suitable architecture for P2P PHSs and guidelines for the provision of PHSs while maintaining information security. Conclusions: Despite the clear advantages of P2P PHSs, the absence of centralized controls and inconsistent views of the network on some P2P systems have profound adverse impacts in terms of security. The security issues identified in this study need to be addressed to increase patients\u27 intention to use PHSs on P2P networks by making them safe to use
A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends
This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the
inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense
mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the
security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity,
confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive
overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in
view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats
are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing
security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless
network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term
evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in
physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open
communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer.
We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their
counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive
jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the
integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and
cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some
technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are
summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201
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