A Research on the Vulnerabilities of PLC using Search Engine

Abstract

The development and convergence of information and communication technologies have been leading to various studies on big data, artificial intelligence, internet of things, and smart cars to be introduced to our daily life. Especially, Smart factory which also base on ICT technology mentioned above are gradually applied to automation of intelligent manufacturing processes which is used to take place in a factory to drive down manufacturing costs and time to profit. Like governments that already encourage the introduction of smart factories, individuals and organizations are also considering introduction of smart factories. Smart factory requires modbus protocol to communicate and it must come with ICS, SCADA, PLC. These systems are greatly important in terms of security. However, using some of public website like Shodan makes it possible to search easily networks related to critical systems and devices. For safe and secure operation in smart factory, we need to raise awareness to these kind of security vulnerabilities in the ICS so that smart factories can cope with security accidents that might occur. In addition, for successfully introduction and activation of smart factories, security vulnerabilities must be reduced by using security measures and security devices should be applied for the ICS. As a baseline work for security improvement, we arrange the potential security vulnerabilities by conducting various real-world experiments and propose some security measures. Through this research, we expect to encourage security awareness of using smart factories which are undoubtedly important issue.