Biblio

The industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can facilitate industrial upgrading, intelligent manufacturing, and lean production. Industrial control system (ICS) is a vital support mechanism for many key infrastructures in the IIoT. However, natural defects in the ICS network security mechanism and the susceptibility of the programmable logic controller (PLC) program to malicious attack pose a threat to the safety of national infrastructure equipment. To improve the security of the underlying equipment in ICS, a model checking method based on timed automata is proposed in this work, which can effectively model the control process and accurately simulate the system state when incorporating time factors. Formal analysis of the ICS and PLC is then conducted to formulate malware detection rules which can constrain the normal behavior of the system. The model checking tool UPPAAL is then used to verify the properties by detecting whether there is an exception in the system and determine the behavior of malware through counter-examples. The chemical reaction control system in Tennessee-Eastman process is taken as an example to carry out modeling, characterization, and verification, and can effectively detect multiple patterns of malware and propose relevant security policy recommendations.

With increasing improvements in different areas, Internet control has been making prominent impacts in almost all areas of technology that has resulted in reasonable advances in every discrete field and therefore the industries too are proceeding to the field of IoT (Internet of Things), in which the communication among heterogeneous equipments is via Internet broadly. So imparting these advances of technology in the Power Station Plant sectors i.e. the power plants will be remotely controlled additional to remote monitoring, with no corporal place as a factor for controlling or monitoring. But imparting this technology the security factor needs to be considered as a basic and such methods need to be put into practice that the communication in such networks or control systems is defended against any third party interventions while the data is being transferred from one device to the other device through the internet (Unrestricted Channel). The paper puts forward exercising RSA,DES and AES encrypting schemes for the purpose of data encryption at the Data Link Layer i.e. before it is transmitted to the other device through Internet and as a result of this the security constraints are maintained. The records put to use have been supplied by NTPC, Dadri, India plus simulation part was executed employing MATLAB.

The article presents a proposal for implementing asymmetric cryptography, specifically the elliptic curves for the protection of high-speed data transmission in a corporate network created on the platform of PLC (Power Line Communications). The solution uses an open-source software library OpenSSL. As part of the design, an experimental workplace was set up, a DHCP and FTP server was established. The possibility of encryption with the selected own elliptic curve from the OpenSSL library was tested so that key pairs (public and private keys) were generated using a software tool. A shared secret was created between communication participants and subsequently, data encryption and decryption were performed.

Nowadays, physical health of equipment controlled by Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) is a significant concern. This paper reports a work, in which, a hardware is placed between Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and the actuator as a solution. The proposed hardware operates in two conditions, i.e. passive and active. Operation of the proposed solution is based on the repetitive operational profile of the actuators. The normal operational profile of the actuator is fed to the protective hardware and is considered as the normal operating condition. In the normal operating condition, the middleware operates in its passive mode and simply monitors electronic signals passing between PLC and Actuator. In case of any malicious operation, the proposed hardware operates in its active mode and both slowly stops the actuator and sends an alert to SCADA server initiating execution of the actuator's emergency profile. Thus, the proposed hardware gains control over the actuator and prevents any physical damage on the operating devices. Two sample experiments are reported in which, results of implementing the proposed solution are reported and assessed. Results show that once the PLC sends incorrect data to actuator, the proposed hardware detects it as an anomaly. Therefore, it does not allow the PLC to send incorrect and unauthorized data pattern to its actuator. Significance of the paper is in introducing a solution to prevent destruction of physical devices apart from source or purpose of the encountered anomaly and apart from CPS functionality or PLC model and operation.

Industrial control systems (ICS) are systems used in critical infrastructures for supervisory control, data acquisition, and industrial automation. ICS systems have complex, component-based architectures with many different hardware, software, and human factors interacting in real time. Despite the importance of security concerns in industrial control systems, there has not been a comprehensive study that examined common security architectural weaknesses in this domain. Therefore, this paper presents the first in-depth analysis of 988 vulnerability advisory reports for Industrial Control Systems developed by 277 vendors. We performed a detailed analysis of the vulnerability reports to measure which components of ICS have been affected the most by known vulnerabilities, which security tactics were affected most often in ICS and what are the common architectural security weaknesses in these systems. Our key findings were: (1) Human-Machine Interfaces, SCADA configurations, and PLCs were the most affected components, (2) 62.86% of vulnerability disclosures in ICS had an architectural root cause, (3) the most common architectural weaknesses were “Improper Input Validation”, followed by “Im-proper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation” and “Improper Authentication”, and (4) most tactic-related vulnerabilities were related to the tactics “Validate Inputs”, “Authenticate Actors” and “Authorize Actors”.

Advent of Cyber has converted the entire World into a Global village. But, due to vurneabilites in SCADA architecture [1] national assests are more prone to cyber attacks.. Cyber invasions have a catastrophic effect in the minds of the civilian population, in terms of states security system. A robust cyber security is need of the hour to protect the critical information infastructrue & critical infrastructure of a country. Here, in this paper we scrutinize cyber terrorism, vurneabilites in SCADA network systems [1], [2] and concept of cyber resilience to combat cyber attacks.

We present a new type of attack termed denial of engineering operations in which an attacker can interfere with the normal cycle of an engineering operation leading to a loss of situational awareness. Specifically, the attacker can deceive the engineering software during attempts to retrieve the ladder logic program from a programmable logic controller (PLC) by manipulating the ladder logic on the PLC, such that the software is unable to process it while the PLC continues to execute it successfully. This attack vector can provide sufficient cover for the attacker»s actual scenario to play out while the owner tries to understand the problem and reestablish positive operational control. To enable the forensic analysis and, eventually, eliminate the threat, we have developed the first decompiler for ladder logic programs. Ladder logic is a graphical programming language for PLCs that control physical processes such as power grid, pipelines, and chemical plants; PLCs are a common target of malicious modifications leading to the compromise of the control behavior (and potentially serious consequences). Our decompiler, Laddis, transforms a low-level representation to its corresponding high-level original representation comprising of graphical symbols and connections. The evaluation of the accuracy of the decompiler on the program of varying complexity demonstrates perfect reconstruction of the original program. We present three new attack scenarios on PLC-deployed ladder logic and demonstrate the effectiveness of the decompiler on these scenarios.

During its nascent stages, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) were made robust to sustain tough industrial environments, but little care was taken to raise defenses against potential cyberthreats. The recent interconnectivity of legacy PLCs and SCADA systems with corporate networks and the internet has significantly increased the threats to critical infrastructure. To counter these threats, researchers have put their efforts in finding defense mechanisms that can protect the SCADA network and the PLCs. Encryption is a critical component of security and therefore has been used by many organizations to protect data on the network. However, since PLC vendors don't make available information about their hardware or software, it becomes challenging to embed encryption into their devices, especially if they rely on legacy protocols. This paper describes an alternative design using an open source PLC that was modified to encrypt all data it sends over the network, independently of the protocol used. Experimental results indicated that the encryption layer increased the security of the link without causing a significant overhead.

With an immense number of threats pouring in from nation states and hacktivists as well as terrorists and cybercriminals, the requirement of a globally secure infrastructure becomes a major obligation. Most critical infrastructures were primarily designed to work isolated from the normal communication network, but due to the advent of the "Smart Grid" that uses advanced and intelligent approaches to control critical infrastructure, it is necessary for these cyber-physical systems to have access to the communication system. Consequently, such critical systems have become prime targets; hence security of critical infrastructure is currently one of the most challenging research problems. Performing an extensive security analysis involving experiments with cyber-attacks on a live industrial control system (ICS) is not possible. Therefore, researchers generally resort to test beds and complex simulations to answer questions related to SCADA systems. Since all conclusions are drawn from the test bed, it is necessary to perform validation against a physical model. This paper examines the fidelity of a virtual SCADA testbed to a physical test bed and allows for the study of the effects of cyber- attacks on both of the systems.