Process-Aware Covert Channels Using Physical Instrumentation in Cyber-Physical Systems

Krishnamurthy, P.; Khorrami, Farshad; Karri, Ramesh; Paul-Pena, David; Salehghaffari, Hossein

doi:10.1109/tifs.2018.2833063

Cited by 28 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…For instance, in filesystem steganography, the cover object might be a file, unused space in a partially allocated block, cluster distribution of an existing file [14], or an inode [7]. In cyber-physical systems (CPS) steganography, a value might be embedded into a sensor value [32], an actuator state or unused registers [34], or into the control logic of a PLC [15]. Hidden data might even be embedded into the number of cyber-physical events of some machine.…”

Section: Analysis Of Existing Steganography Domainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Revised Taxonomy of Steganography Embedding Patterns

Wendzel¹,

Caviglione

Mazurczyk

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security

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Steganography embraces several hiding techniques which spawn across multiple domains. However, the related terminology is not unified among the different domains, such as digital media steganography, text steganography, cyber-physical systems steganography, network steganography (network covert channels), local covert channels, and out-of-band covert channels. To cope with this, a prime attempt has been done in 2015, with the introduction of the so-called hiding patterns, which allow to describe hiding techniques in a more abstract manner. Despite significant enhancements, the main limitation of such a taxonomy is that it only considers the case of network steganography.Therefore, this paper reviews both the terminology and the taxonomy of hiding patterns as to make them more general. Specifically, hiding patterns are split into those that describe the embedding and the representation of hidden data within the cover object.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Section: Analysis Of Existing Steganography Domainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Revised Taxonomy of Steganography Embedding Patterns

Wendzel¹,

Caviglione

Mazurczyk

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security

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“…Krishnamurthy et al [171] described the possibility for malware to rely on acoustic emissions of actuators, e.g., that of a motor controlling a valve as part of a closed-loop process, towards creating a covert channel that can ultimately retrieve a 128-bit key in little over four minutes. Tychalas and Maniatakos [172], examined the applicability of cache timing side-channel attacks, including Spectre and Evictand-Reload.…”

Section: F Side Channel Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Industrial and Critical Infrastructure Security: Technical Analysis of Real-Life Security Incidents

Makrakis¹,

Kolias

Kambourakis

et al. 2021

IEEE Access

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Critical infrastructures and industrial organizations aggressively move towards integrating elements of modern Information Technology (IT) into their monolithic Operational Technology (OT) architectures. Yet, as OT systems progressively become more and more interconnected, they silently have turned into alluring targets for diverse groups of adversaries. Meanwhile, the inherent complexity of these systems, along with their advanced-in-age nature, prevents defenders from fully applying contemporary security controls in a timely manner. Forsooth, the combination of these hindering factors has led to some of the most severe cybersecurity incidents of the past years. This work contributes a full-fledged and upto-date survey of the most prominent threats and attacks against Industrial Control Systems and critical infrastructures, along with the communication protocols and devices adopted in these environments. Our study highlights that threats against critical infrastructure follow an upward spiral due to the mushrooming of commodity tools and techniques that can facilitate either the early or late stages of attacks. Furthermore, our survey exposes that existing vulnerabilities in the design and implementation of several of the OTspecific network protocols and devices may easily grant adversaries the ability to decisively impact physical processes. We provide a categorization of such threats and the corresponding vulnerabilities based on various criteria. As far as we are aware, this is the first time an exhaustive and detailed survey of this kind is attempted.

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“…Krishnamurthy et al [77] proposed a new method to use the analog emissions of physical instrumentation (e.g., actuators and sensors) to leak sensitive or process-specific information through side channels, such as power, electromagnetic, thermal, and acoustic channels. They also considered the controller's dynamics and its closed-loop characteristics to avoid triggering the CPS alarm system.…”

Section: Covert Channelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the perception layer, attackers try to steal information or send malicious commands through various covert channels. An adversary could remotely receive data by changing the lightness of smart lights [32], monitoring covert acoustic channels [77,78], and utilizing hidden voice methods to inject malicious commands [33,34]. Researchers have also tried to mitigate information leakage problems by optimizing the design variables and machine process [97].…”

Section: Attackmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey on Recent Advanced Research of CPS Security

et al. 2021

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Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are next-generation intelligent systems that integrate computing, communication, and control. Malicious attacks on CPSs can lead to both property damage and casualties. Therefore, it is worth surveying CPS security by reviewing and analyzing the latest high-quality related works. In this paper, we provide an overview of the CPS security studies from the last five years and select 142 related works from A- or B-level conferences/journals recommended by the China Computer Federation (CCF). First, we review the main contents of the selected papers and classify them into 24 topics. Then, we analyze hotspots and trends of CPS security technologies in three dimensions: (1) architecture layers (perception, network, and application); (2) application scenarios (smart grids, health care, smart transportation, smart homes, and general grids); and (3) MADC (Measure, Attack, Defense, and Control) types. Finally, we also perform a statistical analysis in terms of paper publication times, author institutes, countries, and sponsors to show the current worldwide CPS security research situation.

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Process-Aware Covert Channels Using Physical Instrumentation in Cyber-Physical Systems

Cited by 28 publications

References 22 publications

A Revised Taxonomy of Steganography Embedding Patterns

A Revised Taxonomy of Steganography Embedding Patterns

Industrial and Critical Infrastructure Security: Technical Analysis of Real-Life Security Incidents

A Survey on Recent Advanced Research of CPS Security

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