A systematic review on security and safety of self-adaptive systems

Abstract

Context:Cyber–physical systems (CPS) are increasingly self-adaptive, i.e. they have the ability to introspect and change their behavior. This self-adaptation process must be considered when modeling the safety and security aspects of the system. Objective:This study collects and compares security attacks and safety hazards on self-adaptive systems (SAS) described in the literature. In addition, mitigation and treatment strategies, as well as the modeling and analysis approaches, are investigated. Method:We conducted a systematic literature review on 21 selected papers. The selection process included a database search on four scientific databases using a common search string (1430 papers), forward and backward snowballing (1402 papers), and filtering the results based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The coding scheme to analyze the content of the papers was obtained through research questions, existing domain-specific taxonomies, and open coding. Results:Safety and security are not jointly modeled in the context of self-adaptive systems. The adaptation process is often not considered in the attack and hazard analysis due to naïve assumptions and modeling. The proposed approaches are mostly verified and validated through simulation often using simple use cases and scenarios. Conclusion:A thorough and joint modeling approach for safety and security in self-adaptive systems is still an open challenge that needs to be addressed. Further work is needed to address the gap between safety and security modeling in self-adaptive systems.Editor’s note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board.