Network emulation focusing on QoS-Oriented satellite communication

This chapter proposes network emulation basics and a complete case study of QoS-oriented Satellite Communication

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

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

An investigation into alternative human-computer interaction in relation to ergonomics for gesture interface design

Recent, innovative developments in the field of gesture interfaces as input techniques have the potential to provide a basic, lower-cost, point-and-click function for graphic user interfaces (GUIs). Since these gesture interfaces are not yet widely used, indeed no tilt-based gesture interface is currently on the market, there is neither an international standard for the testing procedure nor a guideline for their ergonomic design and development. Hence, the research area demands more design case studies on a practical basis. The purpose of the research is to investigate the design factors of gesture interfaces for the point-andclick task in the desktop computer environment. The key function of gesture interfaces is to transfer the specific body movement into the cursor movement on the two-dimensional graphical user interface(2D GUI) on a real-time basis, based in particular on the arm movement. The initial literature review identified limitations related to the cursor movement behaviour with gesture interfaces. Since the cursor movement is the machine output of the gesture interfaces that need to be designed, a new accuracy measure based on the calculation of the cursor movement distance and an associated model was then proposed in order to validate the continuous cursor movement. Furthermore, a design guideline with detailed design requirements and specifications for the tilt-based gesture interfaces was suggested. In order to collect the human performance data and the cursor movement distance, a graphical measurement platform was designed and validated with the ordinary mouse. Since there are typically two types of gesture interface, i.e. the sweep-based and the tilt-based, and no commercial tilt-based gesture interface has yet been developed, a commercial sweep-based gesture interface, namely the P5 Glove, was studied and the causes and effects of the discrete cursor movement on the usability was investigated. According to the proposed design guideline, two versions of the tilt-based gesture 3 interface were designed and validated based on an iterative design process. Most of the phenomena and results from the trials undertaken, which are inter-related, were analyzed and discussed. The research has contributed new knowledge through design improvement of tilt-based gesture interfaces and the improvement of the discrete cursor movement by elimination of the manual error compensation. This research reveals that there is a relation between the cursor movement behaviour and the adjusted R 2 for the prediction of the movement time across models expanded from Fitts’ Law. In such a situation, the actual working area and the joint ranges are lengthy and appreciably different from those that had been planned. Further studies are suggested. The research was associated with the University Alliance Scheme technically supported by Freescale Semiconductor Co., U.S