ICS Interaction Testbed: A Platform for Cyber-Physical Security Research

To perform cyber security research on cyber-physical systems, the involvement of real physical systems and components is an obvious benefit. However, in the area of industrial control systems, limited accessibility to operational systems for experimentation motivates a growing trend for researchers to develop testbeds for security research. Comprehensive testbeds require a significant investment of resources to develop, which may not be the most efficient or feasible option for researchers. This work documents the physical and network architecture of a small but diverse testbed, comprising multiple PLC devices and physical processes. The contribution of this work is to facilitate research that requires capturing of the interactions between cyber systems and physical processes, and the effect of cyber-attacks on physical components and processes in realtime. A classification approach to better understand and communicate how testbeds are utilised in the research community is also proposed and provides context for this work.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Henry Hui

Peter Maynard

Kieran McLaughlin

Conference

Publication date: September 2019

Publication date (Print): September 2019

Pages: 89-96

Affiliations

[0001]Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT)

Queen’s University Belfast

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/icscsr19.12

SO-VID: e4d5ed22-b21d-4369-91c1-1ead8c1a3e66

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: 6th International Symposium for ICS & SCADA Cyber Security Research 2019

Conference acronym: ICS-CSR

Conference number: 6

Conference location: Athens, Greece

Conference date: 10th-12th September 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Cyber Security Research

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/icscsr19.12

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

REFERENCES

Anon, SIMATIC Controllers System OverView - PLCs - Siemens Available at: http://w3.siemens.com/mcms/programmable-logic-controller/en/system-overview/Pages/Default.aspx April 25 2017
P. Van Aubel 2017 Side-channel based intrusion detection for industrial control systems
E. ByresJ. KarschJ. Carter 2005 Firewall deployment for scada and process control networks Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure, Government Digital Service
T. Cruz 2016 A Cybersecurity Detection Framework for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems leee Transactions on Industrial Informatics 12 6 2236 2246
H. Gao 2013 The design of ics testbed based on emulation, physical, and simulation (eps-ics testbed) 2013 Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing 420 423
B. Green 2017 Pains, gains and PLCs: ten lessons from building an industrial control systems testbed for security research 10th {USENIX} Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test ({CSET}17)
H. Holm 2015 A survey of industrial control system testbeds Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems 11 26
I. ISA 2018 Industrial automation and control systems security
V.S. Koganti 2017 A virtual testbed for security management of industrial control systems 2017 12th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALWARE) 85 90
A.P. MathurN.O. Tippenhauer 2016 SWaT: a water treatment testbed for research and training on ICS security 2016 International Workshop on Cyber-physical Systems for Smart Water Networks (CySWater) 31 36
B.S. Mclaughlin 2018 The Cybersecurity Landscape in Industrial Control Systems 104 5 1039 1057
D. Paul-Pena 2017 Process-aware side channel monitoring for embedded control system security 2017 IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI-SoC) 1 6
Q. Qassim 2017 A survey of scada testbed implementation approaches Indian Journal of Science and Technology 10 26
B. ReavesT. Morris 2012 An open virtual testbed for industrial control system security research International Journal of Information Security 11 4 215 229
J.H. ReedC.R.A. Gonzalez 2012 Enhancing Smart Grid cyber security using power fingerprinting: Integrity assessment and intrusion detection 2012 Future of Instrumentation International Workshop (FIIW) Proceedings 1 3
R.S. Ross 2013 Security and privacy controls for federal information systems and organizations NIST Special Publication 800 53 8 13
K. StoufferJ. FalcoK. Scarfone 2011 Guide to industrial control systems (ICS) security NIST special publication 800 82 16
United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission 2017 The Pressurized Water Reactor Available at: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-pwr.html
P. Viorel 2019 Two sides of IT vs. OT Security and ICS Security Operations TechaPeek Available at: https://www.techapeek.com/2019/05/08/two-sides-of-it-vs-ot-security-and-ics-security-operations/
Y. Xie 2018 VTET: A Virtual Industrial Control System Testbed for Cyber Security Research 2018 Third International Conference on Security of Smart Cities, Industrial Control System and Communications (SSIC) 1 7

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Anon, SIMATIC Controllers System OverView - PLCs - Siemens Available at: http://w3.siemens.com/mcms/programmable-logic-controller/en/system-overview/Pages/Default.aspx April 25 2017

[2] P. Van Aubel 2017 Side-channel based intrusion detection for industrial control systems

[3] E. ByresJ. KarschJ. Carter 2005 Firewall deployment for scada and process control networks Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure, Government Digital Service

[4] T. Cruz 2016 A Cybersecurity Detection Framework for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems leee Transactions on Industrial Informatics 12 6 2236 2246

[5] H. Gao 2013 The design of ics testbed based on emulation, physical, and simulation (eps-ics testbed) 2013 Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing 420 423

[6] B. Green 2017 Pains, gains and PLCs: ten lessons from building an industrial control systems testbed for security research 10th {USENIX} Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test ({CSET}17)

[7] H. Holm 2015 A survey of industrial control system testbeds Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems 11 26

[8] I. ISA 2018 Industrial automation and control systems security

[9] V.S. Koganti 2017 A virtual testbed for security management of industrial control systems 2017 12th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALWARE) 85 90

[10] A.P. MathurN.O. Tippenhauer 2016 SWaT: a water treatment testbed for research and training on ICS security 2016 International Workshop on Cyber-physical Systems for Smart Water Networks (CySWater) 31 36

[11] B.S. Mclaughlin 2018 The Cybersecurity Landscape in Industrial Control Systems 104 5 1039 1057

[12] D. Paul-Pena 2017 Process-aware side channel monitoring for embedded control system security 2017 IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI-SoC) 1 6

[13] Q. Qassim 2017 A survey of scada testbed implementation approaches Indian Journal of Science and Technology 10 26

[14] B. ReavesT. Morris 2012 An open virtual testbed for industrial control system security research International Journal of Information Security 11 4 215 229

[15] J.H. ReedC.R.A. Gonzalez 2012 Enhancing Smart Grid cyber security using power fingerprinting: Integrity assessment and intrusion detection 2012 Future of Instrumentation International Workshop (FIIW) Proceedings 1 3

[16] R.S. Ross 2013 Security and privacy controls for federal information systems and organizations NIST Special Publication 800 53 8 13

[17] K. StoufferJ. FalcoK. Scarfone 2011 Guide to industrial control systems (ICS) security NIST special publication 800 82 16

[18] United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission 2017 The Pressurized Water Reactor Available at: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-pwr.html

[19] P. Viorel 2019 Two sides of IT vs. OT Security and ICS Security Operations TechaPeek Available at: https://www.techapeek.com/2019/05/08/two-sides-of-it-vs-ot-security-and-ics-security-operations/

[20] Y. Xie 2018 VTET: A Virtual Industrial Control System Testbed for Cyber Security Research 2018 Third International Conference on Security of Smart Cities, Industrial Control System and Communications (SSIC) 1 7

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