Secure Exchange of Black-Box Simulation Models using FMI in the Industrial Context

Abstract

FMI is a standard for exchanging simulation models in a platform-agnostic way, also in form of black-box models. In the industrial context, it is common to exchange such black-box simulation models especially between partners. Using and running such models, though, is a security issue as there is no way to verify and validate the content of the models. This security issue must be addressed especially in the industrial context where security is considered high priority in general. Based on an exemplary model exchange, possible attacks are analyzed in this work. By using cryptography, three different approaches to pack the additional metadata are presented that aim at providing end-to-end integrity checks to a black-box simulation models. Together with administrative measures, this allows to define those FMUs to be trusted and executed. For sake of completeness, a prototype was implemented to help with the cryptographic processes and show the effectiveness of the provided solution.