SimaticScan: Towards A Specialised Vulnerability Scanner for Industrial Control Systems

Abstract

Over the years, modern Industrial Control Systems (ICS) have become widely computerised and connected via the Internet and are, therefore, potentially vulnerable to cyber attacks. Currently there is a lack of vulnerability scanners specialised to ICS settings. Systems such as PLCScan and ModScan output pertinent information from a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). However, they do not offer any information as to how vulnerable a PLC is to an attack. In this paper, we address these limitations and propose SimaticScan, a vulnerability scanner specialised to Siemens SIMATIC PLCs. Through experimentation in a comprehensive water treatment testbed, we demonstrate SimaticScan’s effectiveness in determining a range of vulnerabilities across three distinct PLCs, including a previously unknown vulnerability in one of the PLCs. Our experiments also show that SimaticScan outperforms the widely used Nessus vulnerability scanner (with relevant ICS-specific plugins deployed).

Affiliations

Security Lancaster Research Centre Lancaster University Lancaster LA1 4WA UK security-centre.lancs.ac.uk

Contributors

Rob Antrobus

Sylvain Frey

Benjamin Green

Awais Rashid

Conference

Publication date: October 2016

Publication date (Print): October 2016

Pages: 11-18

ID: 10.14236/ewic/ICS2016.2

Copyright statement: © Antrobus et al. Published byBCS Learning & Development Ltd.Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium for ICS & SCADA Cyber Security Research 2016

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: 4th International Symposium for ICS & SCADA Cyber Security Research 2016

Conference acronym: ICS-CSR

Conference number: 4

Conference location: Queen’s Belfast University, UK

Conference date: 23 - 25 August 2016

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Cyber Security Research

Product

Product Information: 1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/ICS2016.2

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

Categories

Series title: Electronic Workshops in Computing