Biblio

Remotely connected devices have been adopted in several industrial control systems (ICS) recently due to the advancement in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This led to new security vulnerabilities because of the expansion of the attack surface. Moreover, cybersecurity incidents in critical infrastructures are increasing. In the ICS, RS-485 cables are widely used in its network for serial communication between each component. However, almost 30 years ago, most of the industrial network protocols implemented over RS-485 such as Modbus were designed without security features. Therefore, anomaly detection is required in industrial control networks to secure communication in the systems. The goal of this paper is to study unsupervised anomaly detection in RS-485 traffic using autoencoders. Five threat scenarios in the physical layer of the industrial control network are proposed. The novelty of our method is that RS-485 traffic is collected indirectly by an analog-to-digital converter. In the experiments, multilayer perceptron (MLP), 1D convolutional, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) autoencoders are trained to detect anomalies. The results show that three autoencoders effectively detect anomalous traffic with F1-scores of 0.963, 0.949, and 0.928 respectively. Due to the indirect traffic collection, our method can be practically applied in the industrial control network.

In recent years, generative adversarial networks (GAN) have become a research hotspot in the field of deep learning. Researchers apply them to the field of anomaly detection and are committed to effectively and accurately identifying abnormal images in practical applications. In anomaly detection, traditional supervised learning algorithms have limitations in training with a large number of known labeled samples. Therefore, the anomaly detection model of unsupervised learning GAN is the research object for discussion and research. Firstly, the basic principles of GAN are introduced. Secondly, several typical GAN-based anomaly detection models are sorted out in detail. Then by comparing the similarities and differences of each derivative model, discuss and summarize their respective advantages, limitations and application scenarios. Finally, the problems and challenges faced by GAN in anomaly detection are discussed, and future research directions are prospected.

The single most important scientific question in fusion research may be confinement in a fusion plasma [1] . A recently-developed theoretical model [2] is reviewed for the confinement time of ion kinetic energy in a material where fusion reactions occur. In the theoretical model where ion stopping was considered as a key mechanism for ion kinetic energy loss, an estimate was obtained for the confinement time of ion kinetic energy in a D-T plasma - and found to be orders of magnitude lower than required in the Lawson criterion. As ions transfer their kinetic energies to electrons via ion stopping and thermalization between the ions and the electrons takes place, spontaneous electron cyclotron radiation is identified as a key mechanism for electron kinetic energy loss in a magnetically confined plasma. The energy confinement time is obtained and found in agreement with measurements from TFTR [1] and Wendelstein 7-X [3] . An advanced Lawson criterion is obtained for a magnetically confined thermonuclear fusion reactor.

Traditional risk assessment process based on knowledge of threat occurrence probability against every system’s asset. One should consider asset placement, applied security measures on asset and network levels, adversary capabilities and so on: all of that has significant influence on probability value. We can measure threat probability by modelling complex attack process. Such process requires creating an attack tree, which consist of elementary attacks against different assets and relations between elementary attacks and impact on influenced assets. However, different attack path may lead to targeted impact – so task of finding optimal attack chain on a given system topology emerges. In this paper method for complex attack graph creation presented, allowing automatic building various attack scenarios for a given system. Assuming that exploits of particular vulnerabilities represent by independent events, we can compute the overall success probability of a complex attack as the product of the success probabilities of exploiting individual vulnerabilities. This assumption makes it possible to use algorithms for finding the shortest paths on a directed graph to find the optimal chain of attacks for a given adversary’s target.

For modern Automatic Test Equipment (ATE), one of the most daunting tasks conducting Information Assurance (IA). In addition, there is a desire to Network ATE to allow for information sharing and deployment of software. This is complicated by the fact that typically ATE are “unmanaged” systems in that most are configured, deployed, and then mostly left alone. This results in systems that are not patched with the latest Operating System updates and in fact may be running on legacy Operating Systems which are no longer supported (like Windows XP or Windows 7 for instance). A lot of this has to do with the cost of keeping a system updated on a continuous basis and regression testing the Test Program Sets (TPS) that run on them. Given that an Automated Test System can have thousands of Test Programs running on it, the cost and time involved in doing complete regression testing on all the Test Programs can be extremely expensive. In addition to the Test Programs themselves some Test Programs rely on third party Software and / or custom developed software that is required for the Test Programs to run. Add to this the requirement to perform software steering through all the Test Program paths, the length of time required to validate a Test Program could be measured in months in some cases. If system updates are performed once a month like some Operating System updates this could consume all the available time of the Test Station or require a fleet of Test Stations to be dedicated just to do the required regression testing. On the other side of the coin, a Test System running an old unpatched Operating System is a prime target for any manner of virus or other IA issues. This paper will discuss some of the pro's and con's of a managed Test System and how it might be accomplished.

In this short position paper, we discuss several potential security concerns that can be found at the physical layer of 6th-generation (6G) cellular networks. Discussion on 6G cellular networks is still at its early stage and thus several candidate radio technologies have been proposed but no single technology has yet been finally selected for 6G systems. Among several radio technologies, we focus on three promising ones for 6G physical-layer technologies: reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), Open-RAN (O-RAN), and full-duplex radios. We hope this position paper will spark more active discussion on the security concerns in these new radio technologies.

This article discusses a threat and vulnerability analysis model that allows you to fully analyze the requirements related to information security in an organization and document the results of the analysis. The use of this method allows avoiding and preventing unnecessary costs for security measures arising from subjective risk assessment, planning and implementing protection at all stages of the information systems lifecycle, minimizing the time spent by an information security specialist during information system risk assessment procedures by automating this process and reducing the level of errors and professional skills of information security experts. In the initial sections, the common methods of risk analysis and risk assessment software are analyzed and conclusions are drawn based on the results of comparative analysis, calculations are carried out in accordance with the proposed model.

Systems based on WB protection have a limited lifetime, measured in months and sometimes days. Unfortunately, to understand for how long the application will be uncompromised, if possible, only empirically. However, it is possible to make a preliminary assessment of the security of a particular implementation, depending on the methods and their number used in the implementation, it will allow reallocating resources to more effective means of protection.

How can high-level directives concerning risk, cybersecurity and compliance be operationalized in the central nervous system of any organization above a certain complexity? How can the effectiveness of technological solutions for security be proven and measured, and how can this technology be aligned with the governance and financial goals at the board level? These are the essential questions for any CEO, CIO or CISO that is concerned with the wellbeing of the firm. The concept of Zero Trust (ZT) approaches information and cybersecurity from the perspective of the asset to be protected, and from the value that asset represents. Zero Trust has been around for quite some time. Most professionals associate Zero Trust with a particular architectural approach to cybersecurity, involving concepts such as segments, resources that are accessed in a secure manner and the maxim “always verify never trust”. This paper describes the current state of the art in Zero Trust usage. We investigate the limitations of current approaches and how these are addressed in the form of Critical Success Factors in the Zero Trust Framework developed by ON2IT ‘Zero Trust Innovators’ (1). Furthermore, this paper describes the design and engineering of a Zero Trust artefact that addresses the problems at hand (2), according to Design Science Research (DSR). The last part of this paper outlines the setup of an empirical validation trough practitioner oriented research, in order to gain a broader acceptance and implementation of Zero Trust strategies (3). The final result is a proposed framework and associated technology which, via Zero Trust principles, addresses multiple layers of the organization to grasp and align cybersecurity risks and understand the readiness and fitness of the organization and its measures to counter cybersecurity risks.

The spatial-temporal random variation characteristics of underwater acoustic channel make the difference among the underwater acoustic communication network link channels, which make network performance difficult to predict. In order to better understand the fluctuation and difference of network link channel, we analyze the measured channel data of five links in the Qiandao Lake underwater acoustic communication network experiment. This paper first estimates impulse response, spread function, power delay profile and Doppler power spectrum of the time-varying channel in a short detection time, and compares the time-frequency energy distribution characteristics of each link channel. Then, we statistically analyze the discreteness of the signal to noise ratio, multipath spread and Doppler spread parameter distributions for a total of145 channels over a long observation period. The results show that energy distribution structure and fading fluctuation scale of each link channel in underwater acoustic communication network are obviously different.

Recently, the informatics infrastructure of INRiM Time and Frequency Laboratory has been completely renewed with particular attention to network security and software architecture aspects, with the aims to improve the reliability, robustness and automation of the overall set-up. This upgraded infrastructure has allowed, since January 2020, a fully automated generation and monitoring of the Italian time scale UTC(IT), based on dedicated software developed in-house [1]. We focus in this work on the network and software aspects of our set-up, which enable a robust and reliable automatic time scale generation with continuous monitoring and minimal human intervention.

Power grids are the most extensive man-made systems that are difficult to control and monitor. With the development of conventional power grids and moving toward smart grids, power systems have undergone vast changes since they use the Internet to transmit information and control commands to different parts of the power system. Due to the use of the Internet as a basic infrastructure for smart grids, attackers can sabotage the communication networks and alter the measurements. Due to the complexity of the smart grids, it is difficult for the network operator to detect such cyber-attacks. The attackers can implement the attack in a manner that conventional Bad Data detection (BDD) systems cannot detect since it may not violate the physical laws of the power system. This paper uses the cross wavelet transform (XWT) to detect stealth false data injections attacks (FDIAs) against state estimation (SE) systems. XWT can capture the coherency between measurements of adjacent buses and represent it in time and frequency space. Then, we train a machine learning classification algorithm to distinguish attacked measurements from normal measurements by applying a feature extraction technique.

Due to the large number of terminal nodes and wide deployment of power IOT, it is vulnerable to attacks such as physical hijacking, communication link theft and replay. In order to sense and measure the security risks and threats of massive power IOT terminals in real time, a security threat assessment for power IOT terminals based on knowledge graph was proposed. Firstly, the basic data, operation data and alarm threat data of power IOT terminal equipment are extracted and correlated, and the power IOT terminal based on knowledge graph is constructed. Then, the real-time monitoring data of the power IOT terminal is preprocessed. Based on the knowledge graph of the power IOT terminal, the safety analysis and operation analysis of the terminal are carried out, and the threat index of the power IOT terminal is perceived in real time. Finally, security operation and maintenance personnel make disposal decisions on the terminals according to the threat index of power IOT terminals to ensure the safe and stable operation of power IOT terminal nodes. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional IPS, the method can effectively detect the security threat of the power IOT terminal and reduce the alarm vulnerability rate.

The physical layer secret key generation exploiting wireless channel reciprocity has attracted considerable attention in the past two decades. On-going research have demonstrated its viability in various radio frequency (RF) systems. Most of existing work rely on quantization technique to convert channel measurements into digital binaries that are suitable for secret key generation. However, non-simultaneous packet exchanges in time division duplex systems and noise effects in practice usually create random channel measurements between two users, leading to inconsistent quantization results and mismatched secret bits. While significant efforts were spent in recent research to mitigate such non-reciprocity, no efficient method has been found yet. Unlike existing quantization-based approaches, we take a different viewpoint and perform the secret key agreement by solving a bipartite graph matching problem. Specifically, an efficient dual-permutation secret key generation method, DP-SKG, is developed to match the randomly permuted channel measurements between a pair of users by minimizing their discrepancy holistically. DP-SKG allows two users to generate the same secret key based on the permutation order of channel measurements despite the non-reciprocity over wireless channels. Extensive experimental results show that DP-SKG could achieve error-free key agreement on received signal strength (RSS) with a low cost under various scenarios.

In recent years, a new type of DDoS attacks against backbone routing links have appeared. They paralyze the communication network of a large area by directly congesting the key routing links concerning the network accessibility of the area. This new type of DDoS attacks make it difficult for traditional countermeasures to take effect. This paper proposes and implements an attack detection method based on non-cooperative active measurement. Experiments show that our detection method can efficiently perceive changes of network link performance and assist in identifying such new DDoS attacks. In our testbed, the network anomaly detection accuracy can reach 93.7%.

An experimental network environment plays an important role to examine new systems and protocols. We have developed an experimental network construction tool called LiONv1 (Lightweight On-Demand Networking, ver.1). LiONv1 satisfies the following four requirements: programmer-friendly configuration file based on Infrastructure as Code, multiple virtualization technologies for virtual nodes, physical topology conscious virtual node placement, and L3 protocol agnostic virtual networks. None of existing experimental network environments satisfy all the four requirements. In this paper, we develop LiONv2 which satisfies three more requirements: diversity of available network devices, Internet-scale deployment, and disaggregation of network configuration and device configuration. LiONv2 employs NETCONF and YANG to achieve diversity of available network devices and Internet-scale deployment. LiONv2 also defines two YANG models which disaggregate network configuration and device configuration. LiONv2 is implemented in Go and C languages with public libraries for Go. Measurement results show that construction time of a virtual network is irrelevant to the number of virtual nodes if a single virtual node is created per physical node.

In this work, a new human-computer assistive technology gadget designed for people with impairments is evaluated. The developed human-in-the-loop interface device has an embedded assistance controller and can replace the traditional mouse, gamepad and keyboard, enabling human-computer hands-free full access. This work is concerned with the assistive device performance characterization aspects. Based on the experiments carried out, the human-computer performance improvement with the embedded controller is analysed in detail. Results show that adding the human-in-the-loop assistance controller improves human-computer hands-free skills, which is an innovative contribution for the replacement of computer interfaces that depend on the human hands.

Memristive nano crossbar array has paved the way for high density memories but in a very low power environment. But such high density circuits face multiple problems at the time of implementation. The sneak path problem in crossbar array is one such problem which causes difficulty in distinguishing the logical states of the memristors. On the other hand, hardware Trojan causes malfunctioning of the circuit or performance degradation. If any of these are present in the nano crossbar, it is difficult to identify whether the performance degradation is due to the sneak path problem or due to that of Hardware Trojan.This paper makes a comparative study of the sneak path problem and the hardware Trojan to understand the performance difference between both. It is observed that some parameters are affected by sneak path problem but remains unaffected in presence of Hardware Trojan and vice versa. Analyzing these parameters, we can classify whether the performance degradation is due to sneak path or due to Hardware Trojan. The experimental results well establish the proposed methods of detection of hardware Trojan in presence of sneak path in memristive nano crossbar circuits.

In recent times, security and privacy concerns associated with IoT devices have caught the attention of research community. The problem of securing IoT devices is immensely aggravating due to advancement in technology. These IoT devices are resource-constraint i.e. in terms of power, memory, computation, etc., so they are less capable to secure themselves. So we need a better approach to secure IoT devices within the limited resources. Several studies state that for these lightweight IoT devices Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) suits perfectly. But there are several elliptic curve domain parameter standards, which may be used for different security levels. When any ECC based product is deployed then the selection of a suitable elliptic curve standard according to usability is become very important. So we have to choose one suitable standard domain parameter for the required security level. In this paper, two different elliptic curve standard domain parameters named secp256k1 and secp192k1 proposed by an industry consortium named Standards for Efficient Cryptography Group (SECG) [1] are implemented and then analyzed their performances metrics. The performance of each domain parameter is measured in computation time.

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) systems based on fiber brag grating (FBG) have been widely used for distributed temperature and strain sensing over the past years, and function well in perimeter security monitoring and structural health monitoring. However, with relevant algorithms functioning with low accuracy, the DAS system presently has trouble in signal recognition, which puts forward a higher requirement on a high-precision identification method. In this paper, we propose an improved recognition method based on relative fundamental signal processing methods and convolutional neural network (CNN) to construct a mathematical model of disturbance FBG signal recognition. Firstly, we apply short-time energy (STE) to extract original disturbance signals. Secondly, we adopt short-time Fourier transform (STFT) to divide a longer time signal into short segments. Finally, we employ a CNN model, which has already been trained to recognize disturbance signals. Experimental results conducted in the real environments show that our proposed algorithm can obtain accuracy over 96.5%.

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are ubiquitous, with web cameras, smart refrigerators, and digital assistants appearing in homes, offices, and public spaces. However, these devices are lacking in security measures due to their low time to market and insufficient funding for security research and development. In order to improve the security of IoTs, we have defined novel security metrics based on generic IoT characteristics. Furthermore, we have developed automation for experimentation with IoT devices that results to repeatable and reproducible calculations of security metrics within a realistic IoT testbed. Our results demonstrate that repeatable IoT security measurements are feasible with automation. They prove quantitatively intuitive hypotheses. For example, an large number of inbound / outbound network connections contributes to higher probability of compromise or measuring password strength leads to a robust estimation of IoT security.

The goal of building a system for precise time measurement in pixel radiation detectors motivates the development of flexible design and verification environment. It should be suitable for quick simulations when individual elements of the system are developed and should be scalable so that systemlevel verification is possible as well. The approach presented in this paper is to utilize the power of SystemVerilog language and apply basic Object-Oriented Programming concepts to the test program. Since the design under test is a full-custom mixed-signal design, it must be simulated with AMS simulator and various features of analog design environment are used as well (Monte Carlo analysis, corner analysis, schematic capture GUI-related functions). The presented approach combines these two worlds and should be suitable for small academia projects, where design and verification is seldom done by separate teams.

In order to meet the requirements of secure start-up of embedded devices, this paper designs a secure and trusted circuit to realize the secure and trusted start-up of the system. This paper analyzes the principle and method of the circuit design, and verifies the preset information of the embedded device before the start of the embedded device, so as to ensure that the start process of the embedded device is carried out according to the predetermined way, and then uses the security module to measure the integrity of the data in the start process, so as to realize a trusted embedded system. The experimental results show that the security module has stronger security features and low latency. The integrity measurement is implemented in the trusted embedded system to realize the safe startup of embedded devices.

In this work a time evolution model is used to help categorize malicious samples. This method can be used in anti-malware testing procedures as well as in detecting cyber-attacks. The time evolution mathematical model can help security experts to better understand the behaviour of malware attacks and malware families. It can be used for estimating much better their spreading and for planning the required defence actions against them. The basic time dependent variable of this model is the Ratio of the malicious files within an investigated time window. To estimate the main characteristics of the time series describing the change of the Ratio values related to a specific malicious file, nonlinear, exponential curve fitting method is used. The free parameters of the model were determined by numerical searching algorithms. The three parameters can be used in the information security field to describe more precisely the behaviour of a piece of malware and a family of malware as well. In the case of malware families, the aggregation of these parameters can provide effective solution for estimating the cyberthreat trends.

In more electrical aircraft, the embedded electrical network is handling more and more vital functions, being more and more strained as well. Attenuation of switching harmonics is a key step in the network reliability, thus filtering elements play a central role. To keep the weight of the embedded network reasonable, weakly damped high-order filters shall be preferred. Flatness-based control (FBC) can offer both high bandwidth regulation and large signal stability proof. This make FBC a good candidate to handle the inherent oscillating behavior of aforementioned filters. However, this control strategy can be tricky to implement, especially with high order systems. Moreover, FBC is more sensor demanding than classic PI-based control. This paper address these two drawbacks. First, a novel trajectory planning for high order systems is proposed. This method does not require multiple derivations. Then the input sensors are removed thanks to a parameters estimator. Feasibility and performances are verified with experimental results. Performances comparison with cascaded-loop topologies are given in final section to prove the relevance of the proposed control strategy.