Biblio

The use of software daily has become inevitable nowadays. Almost all everyday tools and the most different areas (e.g., medicine or telecommunications) are dependent on software. The C programming language is one of the most used languages for software development, such as operating systems, drivers, embedded systems, and industrial products. Even with the appearance of new languages, it remains one of the most used [1] . At the same time, C lacks verification mechanisms, like array boundaries, leaving the entire responsibility to the developer for the correct management of memory and resources. These weaknesses are at the root of buffer overflows (BO) vulnerabilities, which range the first place in the CWE’s top 25 of the most dangerous weaknesses [2] . The exploitation of BO when existing in critical safety systems, such as railways and autonomous cars, can have catastrophic effects for manufacturers or endanger human lives.

There is an increase in interest and necessity for an interoperable and efficient railway network across Europe, creating a key distribution problem between train and trackside entities’ key management centres (KMC). Train and trackside entities establish a secure session using symmetric keys (KMAC) loaded beforehand by their respective KMC using procedures that are not scalable and prone to operational mistakes. A single system would simplify the KMAC distribution between KMCs; nevertheless, it is difficult to place the responsibility for such a system for the whole European area within one central organization. A single system could also expose relationships between KMCs, revealing information, such as plans to use an alternative route or serve a new region, jeopardizing competitive advantage. This paper proposes a scalable and decentralised key management system that allows KMC to share cryptographic keys using transactions while keeping relationships anonymous. Using non-interactive proofs of knowledge and assigning each entity a private and public key, private key owners can issue valid transactions while all system actors can validate them. Our performance analysis shows that the proposed system is scalable when a proof of concept is implemented with settings close to the expected railway landscape in 2030.

The digitalization of safety-critical railroad infrastructure enables new types of attacks. This increases the need to integrate Information Technology (IT) security measures into railroad systems. For that purpose, we rely on a security architecture for a railway object controller which controls field elements that we developed in previous work. Our architecture enables the integration of security mechanisms into a safety-certified railway system. In this paper, we demonstrate the practical feasibility of our architecture by using a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and a Multiple Independent Levels of Safety and Security (MILS) Separation Kernel (SK) for our implementation. Our evaluation includes a test bed and shows how certification and homologation can be achieved.

Identity resolution system is the primary technical research problem to set up the data collection capability of industrial internet, and the configuration resolution of complex assets is an application difficulty. To implement the particular requirements of complex equipment configuration management, an industry-oriented identity resolution architecture and the configuration resolution service were designed. In accordance with the technical information management of high-speed train, corresponding handle structures was proposed to describe the configuration structure and related components information of EMU (Electric Multiple Unit). A distributed processing algorithm for configuration resolution and the hit-ratio evaluation method of handle service sites was proposed. The performance, stability, and resolution consistency of the handle system in this paper are proved by experiments, which is also great significant to the intelligent identity applications in other industries.

The digitalization process did not circumvent either railway domain. With new technology and new functionality, such as digital interlocking system, automated train operation, object recognition, GPS positioning, traditional railway domain got a vulnerability that can be exploited. Another issue is usage of CotS (Commercial-of-the-Shelf) hardware and software and openness of traditionally closed system. Most of published similar paper are focused on cyber security and security & safety model for securing of assessment in this kind of domain, but this paper will deal with this upcoming railway technology and digital investigation process in such kind of environment. Digital investigation process will be presented, but not only in ICS and SCADA system, but also in specific, railway environment. Framework for investigation process and for maintaining chain of custody in railway domain will be proposed.

Digitalisation of domains such as medical and railway utilising cloud and networking technologies such as 5G and forthcoming 6G systems presents additional security challenges. The establishment of the identity, integrity and provenance of devices, services and other functional components removed a number of attack vectors and addresses a number of so called zero-trust security requirements. The addition of trusted hardware, such as TPM, and related remote attestation integrated with the networking and cloud infrastructure will be necessary requirement.

In order to effectively assess the security risks in multimodal transport networks, a security risk assessment method based on WBS-RBS and Pythagorean Fuzzy Weighted Average (PFWA) operator is proposed. The risk matrix 0-1 assignment of WBS-RBS is replaced by the Pythagorean Fuzzy Number (PFLN) scored by experts. The security risk ranking values of multimodal transport network are calculated from two processes of whole-stage and phased, respectively, and the security risk assessment results are obtained. Finally, an example of railway-highway-waterway intermodal transportation process of automobile parts is given to verify the validity of the method, the results show that the railway transportation is more stable than the waterway transportation, and the highway transportation has the greatest security risk, and for different security risk factors, personnel risk has the greatest impact. The risk of goods will change with the change of the attributes of goods, and the security risk of storage facilities is the smallest.

With the development of modern High-Speed Railway (HSR) and mobile communication systems, network operators have a strong demand to provide high-quality on-board Internet services for HSR passengers. Multi-path TCP (MPTCP) provides a potential solution to aggregate available network bandwidth, greatly overcoming throughout degradation and severe jitter using single transmission path during the high-speed train moving. However, the choose of MPTCP algorithms, i.e., Coupled or Uncoupled, has a great impact on the performance. In this paper, we investigate this interesting issue in the practical datasets along multiple HSR lines. Particularly, we collect the first-hand network datasets and analyze the characteristics and category of traffic flows. Based on this statistics, we measure and analyze the transmission performance for both mice flows and elephant ones with different MPTCP congestion control algorithms in HSR scenarios. The simulation results show that, by comparing with the coupled MPTCP algorithms, i.e., Fully Coupled and LIA, the uncoupled EWTCP algorithm provides more stable throughput and balances congestion window distribution, more suitable for the HSR scenario for elephant flows. This work provides significant reference for the development of on-board devices in HSR network systems.

As safety-critical systems become increasingly interconnected, a system's operations depend on the reliability and security of the computing components and the interconnections among them. Therefore, a growing body of research seeks to tie safety analysis to security analysis. Specifically, it is important to analyze system safety under different attacker models. In this paper, we develop generic parameterizable state automaton templates to model the effects of an attack. Then, given an attacker model, we generate a state automaton that represents the system operation under the threat of the attacker model. We use a railway signaling system as our case study and consider threats to the communication protocol and the commands issued to physical devices. Our results show that while less skilled attackers are not able to violate system safety, more dedicated and skilled attackers can affect system safety. We also consider several countermeasures and show how well they can deter attacks.

The objective of this paper is to explore the current notions of systems and “System of Systems” and establish the case for quantitative characterization of their structural, behavioural and contextual facets that will pave the way for further formal development (mathematical formulation). This is partly driven by stakeholder needs and perspectives and also in response to the necessity to attribute and communicate the properties of a system more succinctly, meaningfully and efficiently. The systematic quantitative characterization framework proposed will endeavor to extend the notion of emergence that allows the definition of appropriate metrics in the context of a number of systems ontologies. The general characteristic and information content of the ontologies relevant to system and system of system will be specified but not developed at this stage. The current supra-system, system and sub-system hierarchy is also explored for the formalisation of a standard notation in order to depict a relative scale and order and avoid the seemingly arbitrary attributions.