ARMET: behavior-based secure and resilient industrial control systems

In this paper, we introduce a design methodology to develop reliable and secure industrial control systems (ICSs) based on the behavior of their computational resources (i.e., process/application) and underlying physical resources (e.g., the controlled plant). The methodology has three independent, but complementary, components that employ novel approaches and techniques in the design of reliable and secure ICSs. First, we introduce reliable-and-secure-by-design development of secure industrial control applications through stepwise sound refinement of an executable specification, employing deductive synthesis to enforce functional and nonfunctional (e.g., security and safety) properties of ICS applications. Second, we present a runtime security monitor at the middleware level of ICSs that protects ICS operation in the field through comparison of the application execution and the application specification execution in real time; the runtime security monitor can be synthesized from the executable specification. Finally, based on the specification, we perform a vulnerability analysis for false data injection (FDI) attacks, which leads to ICS application designs that are resilient to this type of attacks. We demonstrate the methodology through its application to a basic and typical ICS example application, describing all the tools used and ARMET, the middleware monitor that constitutes the core component of the methodology

A Secure Dual-MCU Architecture for Robust Communication of IIoT Devices

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has already become a part of our everyday life be it water supply, smart grid, or production, IIoT is everywhere. For example, factory operators want to know the current state of the production line. These new demands for data acquisition in modern plants require industrial components to be able to communicate. Nowadays, network communication in Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) is often implemented via an IP-based protocol. This intercommunication also brings a larger attack surface for hackers. If an IIoT device is influenced by attackers, the physical process could be affected. For example, a high network load could cause a high Central Processing Unit (CPU) load and influence the reaction time on the physical control side. In this paper, we introduce a dual Microcontroller Unit (MCU) setup to ensure a resilient controlling for IIoT devices like Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). We introduce a possible solution for the demand of secure architectures in the IIoT. Moreover, we provide a Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation with a benchmark and a comparison with a standard PLC

Multi-Layer Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience for Smart Grid

The smart grid is a large-scale complex system that integrates communication technologies with the physical layer operation of the energy systems. Security and resilience mechanisms by design are important to provide guarantee operations for the system. This chapter provides a layered perspective of the smart grid security and discusses game and decision theory as a tool to model the interactions among system components and the interaction between attackers and the system. We discuss game-theoretic applications and challenges in the design of cross-layer robust and resilient controller, secure network routing protocol at the data communication and networking layers, and the challenges of the information security at the management layer of the grid. The chapter will discuss the future directions of using game-theoretic tools in addressing multi-layer security issues in the smart grid.Comment: 16 page

Resilience of multi-robot systems to physical masquerade attacks

The advent of autonomous mobile multi-robot systems has driven innovation in both the industrial and defense sectors. The integration of such systems in safety-and security-critical applications has raised concern over their resilience to attack. In this work, we investigate the security problem of a stealthy adversary masquerading as a properly functioning agent. We show that conventional multi-agent pathfinding solutions are vulnerable to these physical masquerade attacks. Furthermore, we provide a constraint-based formulation of multi-agent pathfinding that yields multi-agent plans that are provably resilient to physical masquerade attacks. This formalization leverages inter-agent observations to facilitate introspective monitoring to guarantee resilience.Accepted manuscrip

A virtual actuator approach for the secure control of networked LPV systems under pulse-width modulated DoS attacks

In this paper, we formulate and analyze the problem of secure control in the context of networked linear parameter varying (LPV) systems. We consider an energy-constrained, pulse-width modulated (PWM) jammer, which corrupts the control communication channel by performing a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. In particular, the malicious attacker is able to erase the data sent to one or more actuators. In order to achieve secure control, we propose a virtual actuator technique under the assumption that the behavior of the attacker has been identified. The main advantage brought by this technique is that the existing components in the control system can be maintained without need of retuning them, since the virtual actuator will perform a reconfiguration of the plant, hiding the attack from the controller point of view. Using Lyapunov-based results that take into account the possible behavior of the attacker, design conditions for calculating the virtual actuators gains are obtained. A numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed secure control strategy.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

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