Abstract
The increased number of cyber threats against the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and automation systems in the Industrial-Internet-of-Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 era has raised concerns in respect to the importance of securing critical infrastructures and manufacturing plants. The evolution towards interconnection and interoperability has expanded the vulnerabilities of these systems, especially in the context of the widely spread legacy standard protocols, by exposing the data to the outside network. After gaining access to the system data by launching a variety of attacks, an intruder can cause severe damage to the industrial process in place. Hence, this paper attempts to respond to the security issue caused by legacy structures using insecure communication protocols (e.g., Modbus TCP, DNP3, S7), presenting a different perspective focused on the capabilities of a trusted platform module (TPM). Furthermore, the intent is to assure the authenticity of the data transmitted between two entities on the same (horizontal interoperation) or different (vertical interoperation) hierarchical levels communicating through Modbus TCP protocol based on functionalities obtained by integrating trusted platform modules. From the experimental results perspective, the paper aims to show the advantages of integrating TPMs in automation/SCADA systems in terms of security. Two methods are proposed in order to assure the authenticity of the messages which are transmitted, respectively the study presents the measurements related to the increased time latency introduced due to the proposed concept.
Highlights
Automation and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are in charge of controlling and monitoring plants and critical infrastructures, vital for the well-functioning of important areas such as water, food, health, economy, transportation, energy, and national security.In the current context of a more and more digitalized physical world [1,2], it is more than necessary to protect and secure these systems against any type of attack
As described in [20], one important aspect to be considered in the analysis of automation and SCADA structures is related to the Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) security in respect to payload and firmware attacks
Worth mentioning is that the total duration for the generation of the key pair and the loading of the public key, cryptographic operations associated to the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)-256 method is 0.023065 s higher than the time measured for the HMAC SHA-256 method
Summary
Automation and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are in charge of controlling and monitoring plants and critical infrastructures, vital for the well-functioning of important areas such as water, food, health, economy, transportation, energy, and national security. One approach presented in [10] is to adopt a smooth migration from the legacy manufacturing systems towards the Industry 4.0 concept by offering an Ethernet-based communication network in the context of SCADA and automation systems. Another approach is presented in [11] where the authors are implementing a program which reconfigures machine parameters and performs self-data analysis in order to automatize a bottling process. In the above-mentioned context, the authors propose an approach for legacy protocols from industrial systems to secure the vehiculated data based on trusted platform modules (TPMs).
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