Newly Developed Software Isolates Cyber Attacks on Networked Control Systems
A software algorithm developed by researchers from North Carolina State University promises to detect and isolate cyber attacks on networked control systems.
Because networked control systems—pathways that connect and coordinate activities between computers and physical devices—rely on wireless or Internet connections, they are vulnerable to cyber attacks, the researchers say. “Flame” and “ Stuxnet” are examples of costly, high-profile attacks on networked control systems in recent years.
As networked control systems have grown increasingly large and complex, system designers have moved away from having system devices—or “agents”—coordinate their activities through a single, centralized computer hub, or brain. Instead, designers have created “distributed network control systems” (D-NCSs) that allow all of the system agents to work together, like a bunch of mini-brains, to coordinate their activities. This allows the systems to operate more efficiently. These distributed systems can also operate more securely.
The software algorithm developed by the North Carolina State researchers can detect when an individual agent in a D-NCS has been compromised by a cyber attack. The algorithm then isolates the compromised agent, protecting the rest of the system and allowing it to continue functioning normally. This gives D-NCSs resilience and security advantages over systems that rely on a central computer hub, because the centralized design means the entire system would be compromised if the central computer were hacked.
“In addition, our security algorithm can be incorporated directly into the code used to operate existing distributed control systems, with minor modifications,” says Dr. Mo-Yuen Chow, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university and coauthor of a paper on the work. “It would not require a complete overhaul of existing systems.”
“We have demonstrated that the system works, and are now moving forward with additional testing under various cyber-attack scenarios to optimize the algorithm’s detection rate and system performance,” says Wente Zeng, a PhD student at North Carolina State and lead author of the paper.
The paper, “ Convergence and Recovery Analysis of the Secure Distributed Control Methodology for D-NCS ,” will be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics, May 28-31, in Taipei, Taiwan. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Source: POWERnews, NCSU, POWER, Wired.com
NOTE: This story was originally published on May 16