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Cybersecurity of Modern Cyber-Physical Systems
Full text linkCyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) refer to those systems characterized by the interconnection of information technology and the physical process domains. These systems are nowadays employed in a wide range of applications, such as health monitoring, industrial control systems, and transportation. The recent digitalization and smartification of the processes required to integrate the Internet connection into CPSs, enabling functions like remote connection and cloud computing, but at the same opening new dangerous vulnerabilities surfaces. Indeed, recent events in history have shown many cyber-attacks and vulnerabilities discovered on CPSs. For this reason, there is still a need to contribute to securing such systems, both from the design and implementation points of view.
In this thesis, we analyze the cybersecurity of modern CPSs, identifying and highlighting the current vulnerabilities, the research gaps in terms of security, and the threats affecting them. Then, we propose novel security mechanisms to prevent potential cyber-attacks. This thesis is composed of three parts as follows.
In the first part of the thesis, we will focus on the security of Industrial Control Systems (ICSs). These systems are used to control and monitor critical infrastructures and industrial processes. As a first step, we gather all the knowledge in this field from the literature, and we provide a systematic analysis of the testing platform and the detection systems solutions operating on them. To motivate the necessity of improving the security of current industrial systems, we performed a measurement study highlighting the dramatic exposure of the communication protocols and services of more than industrial endpoints. Then, we developed and deployed an innovative ICS honeypot. While measuring the honeypot exposure, we noted that industrial systems are still highly targeted and interacted with by malicious actors over the internet on specific vulnerable industrial services.
In the second part of the thesis, we will look at the security of vehicular systems. Like ICSs, modern vehicles present vulnerabilities due to the adoption of legacy components, enabling the possibility of malicious exploits. To this end, we will focus on the internal communication bus of cars, we examine its vulnerabilities, the current solutions in the literature, and their limitations, and propose an innovative cryptographic key distribution system among the network nodes.
We will then focus on the emerging electric vehicle paradigm. We identified two possible cyber-attacks on this ecosystem. The first is based on a relay attack vulnerability, which implies charging illegitimate vehicle recharging fees. Instead, the second one consists of a privacy leakage from the current absorbed during the vehicle's recharging process.
In the third part of the thesis, we leverage the knowledge of our studies to investigate the security of CPS cross-domain applications.
In particular, we first present a survey on Power Side-Channel (PSC) exploits in the literature, focusing on existing attacks and countermeasures. Indeed, PSCs have been proven effective in reversing and profiling the functioning of many embedded devices (e.g., smart cards, vehicles, and laptops).
Then, we develop a novel framework to fingerprint Universal Serial Bus devices from their power consumption. This funding can be used, for instance, to securely authenticate a personal device and avoid malware delivery injection in critical applications (e.g., Stuxnet).
Finally, we present the first security analysis of the emerging Hyperloop transportation technology. Hyperloop merges the concepts of ICS since it consists of a critical, distributed, and sensing infrastructure, and the concept of vehicle, due to the pod communication management. As a result, Hyperloop inherits all the vulnerabilities and risks of the two systems.Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) refer to those systems characterized by the interconnection of information technology and the physical process domains. These systems are nowadays employed in a wide range of applications, such as health monitoring, industrial control systems, and transportation. The recent digitalization and smartification of the processes required to integrate the Internet connection into CPSs, enabling functions like remote connection and cloud computing, but at the same opening new dangerous vulnerabilities surfaces. Indeed, recent events in history have shown many cyber-attacks and vulnerabilities discovered on CPSs. For this reason, there is still a need to contribute to securing such systems, both from the design and implementation points of view.
In this thesis, we analyze the cybersecurity of modern CPSs, identifying and highlighting the current vulnerabilities, the research gaps in terms of security, and the threats affecting them. Then, we propose novel security mechanisms to prevent potential cyber-attacks. This thesis is composed of three parts as follows.
In the first part of the thesis, we will focus on the security of Industrial Control Systems (ICSs). These systems are used to control and monitor critical infrastructures and industrial processes. As a first step, we gather all the knowledge in this field from the literature, and we provide a systematic analysis of the testing platform and the detection systems solutions operating on them. To motivate the necessity of improving the security of current industrial systems, we performed a measurement study highlighting the dramatic exposure of the communication protocols and services of more than industrial endpoints. Then, we developed and deployed an innovative ICS honeypot. While measuring the honeypot exposure, we noted that industrial systems are still highly targeted and interacted with by malicious actors over the internet on specific vulnerable industrial services.
In the second part of the thesis, we will look at the security of vehicular systems. Like ICSs, modern vehicles present vulnerabilities due to the adoption of legacy components, enabling the possibility of malicious exploits. To this end, we will focus on the internal communication bus of cars, we examine its vulnerabilities, the current solutions in the literature, and their limitations, and propose an innovative cryptographic key distribution system among the network nodes.
We will then focus on the emerging electric vehicle paradigm. We identified two possible cyber-attacks on this ecosystem. The first is based on a relay attack vulnerability, which implies charging illegitimate vehicle recharging fees. Instead, the second one consists of a privacy leakage from the current absorbed during the vehicle's recharging process.
In the third part of the thesis, we leverage the knowledge of our studies to investigate the security of CPS cross-domain applications.
In particular, we first present a survey on Power Side-Channel (PSC) exploits in the literature, focusing on existing attacks and countermeasures. Indeed, PSCs have been proven effective in reversing and profiling the functioning of many embedded devices (e.g., smart cards, vehicles, and laptops).
Then, we develop a novel framework to fingerprint Universal Serial Bus devices from their power consumption. This funding can be used, for instance, to securely authenticate a personal device and avoid malware delivery injection in critical applications (e.g., Stuxnet).
Finally, we present the first security analysis of the emerging Hyperloop transportation technology. Hyperloop merges the concepts of ICS since it consists of a critical, distributed, and sensing infrastructure, and the concept of vehicle, due to the pod communication management. As a result, Hyperloop inherits all the vulnerabilities and risks of the two systems
EVExchange: A Relay Attack on Electric Vehicle Charging System
Full text linkTo support the increasing spread of Electric Vehicles (EVs), Charging
Stations (CSs) are being installed worldwide. The new generation of CSs employs
the Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G) paradigm by implementing novel standards such as the
ISO 15118. This standard enables high-level communication between the vehicle
and the charging column, helps manage the charge smartly, and simplifies the
payment phase. This novel charging paradigm, which connects the Smart Grid to
external networks (e.g., EVs and CSs), has not been thoroughly examined yet.
Therefore, it may lead to dangerous vulnerability surfaces and new research
challenges.
In this paper, we present EVExchange, the first attack to steal energy during
a charging session in a V2G communication: i.e., charging the attacker's car
while letting the victim pay for it. Furthermore, if reverse charging flow is
enabled, the attacker can even sell the energy available on the victim's car!
Thus, getting the economic profit of this selling, and leaving the victim with
a completely discharged battery. We developed a virtual and a physical testbed
in which we validate the attack and prove its effectiveness in stealing the
energy. To prevent the attack, we propose a lightweight modification of the ISO
15118 protocol to include a distance bounding algorithm. Finally, we validated
the countermeasure on our testbeds. Our results show that the proposed
countermeasure can identify all the relay attack attempts while being
transparent to the user.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure
EVScout2.0: Electric Vehicle Profiling through Charging Profile
Full text linkElectric Vehicles (EVs) represent a green alternative to traditional fuel-powered vehicles. To enforce their widespread use, both the technical development and the security of users shall be guaranteed. Users' privacy represents a possible threat that impairs the adoption of EVs. In particular, recent works showed the feasibility of identifying EVs based on the current exchanged during the charging phase. In fact, while the resource negotiation phase runs over secure communication protocols, the signal exchanged during the actual charging contains features peculiar to each EV. In what is commonly known as profiling, a suitable feature extractor can associate such features to each EV.In this article, we propose EVScout2.0, an extended and improved version of our previously proposed framework to profile EVs based on their charging behavior. By exploiting the current and pilot signals exchanged during the charging phase, our scheme can extract features peculiar for each EV, hence allowing..
VLC Physical Layer Security through RIS-aided Jamming Receiver for 6G Wireless Networks
Full text linkVisible Light Communication (VLC) is one the most promising enabling
technology for future 6G networks to overcome Radio-Frequency (RF)-based
communication limitations thanks to a broader bandwidth, higher data rate, and
greater efficiency. However, from the security perspective, VLCs suffer from
all known wireless communication security threats (e.g., eavesdropping and
integrity attacks). For this reason, security researchers are proposing
innovative Physical Layer Security (PLS) solutions to protect such
communication. Among the different solutions, the novel Reflective Intelligent
Surface (RIS) technology coupled with VLCs has been successfully demonstrated
in recent work to improve the VLC communication capacity. However, to date, the
literature still lacks analysis and solutions to show the PLS capability of
RIS-based VLC communication. In this paper, we combine watermarking and jamming
primitives through the Watermark Blind Physical Layer Security (WBPLSec)
algorithm to secure VLC communication at the physical layer. Our solution
leverages RIS technology to improve the security properties of the
communication. By using an optimization framework, we can calculate RIS phases
to maximize the WBPLSec jamming interference schema over a predefined area in
the room. In particular, compared to a scenario without RIS, our solution
improves the performance in terms of secrecy capacity without any assumption
about the adversary's location. We validate through numerical evaluations the
positive impact of RIS-aided solution to increase the secrecy capacity of the
legitimate jamming receiver in a VLC indoor scenario. Our results show that the
introduction of RIS technology extends the area where secure communication
occurs and that by increasing the number of RIS elements the outage probability
decreases
USB powered devices: A survey of side-channel threats and countermeasures
Full text linkRecent technological innovations lead to the rise of a plethora of portable electronic devices such as smartphones, small household appliances, and other IoT devices. To power or recharge the battery of such devices, manufacturers identified in the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard a convenient solution, as it enables both communication and energy supply. Unfortunately, the default trust on USB ports has been exploited by hackers to extract highly sensitive user data on such devices. Despite the efforts by security experts and manufacturers to detect and block this threat, an even more stealthy approach to undermine users privacy relies on side-channel attacks on the USB interface, such as electromagnetic emissions and power consumption.In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of side-channel analysis on the security of USB-powered devices. Differently from other surveys on USB-based attacks via the communication interface only, this survey considers research works that aim to infer or extract private information from the energy supply, the device itself, or unintentionally available functionalities. In particular, we consider this emergent trend of security work that was not previously considered in other surveys, such as the energy consumption and electromagnetic emission analyses, as well as Juice Filming Charging (JFC) attacks. We first analyze the physical properties of the side-channels and technical characteristics of such research work, we then summarize the countermeasures proposed in the state-of-the-art. Finally, we also identify some possible future directions to foster further research in this field
PAID: Perturbed Image Attacks Analysis and Intrusion Detection Mechanism for Autonomous Driving Systems
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