A Trusted Autonomic Architecture to Safeguard Cyber-Physical Control Leaf Nodes and Protect Process Integrity

Cyber-physical systems are networked through IT infrastructure and susceptible to malware. Threats targeting process control are much more safety-critical than traditional computing systems since they jeopardize the integrity of physical infrastructure. Existing defence mechanisms address security at the network nodes but do not protect the physical infrastructure if network integrity is compromised. An interface guardian architecture is implemented on cyber-physical control leaf nodes to maintain process integrity by enforcing high-level safety and stability policies. Preemptive detection schemes are implemented to monitor process behavior and anticipate malicious activity before process safety and stability are compromised. Autonomic properties are employed to automatically protect process integrity by initiating switch-over to a verified backup controller. Subsystems adhere to strict trust requirements safeguarding them from adversarial intrusion. The preemptive detection schemes, switch-over logic, backup controller, and process communication are all trusted components that are separated from the untrusted production controller. The proposed architecture is applied to a rotary inverted pendulum experiment and implemented on a Xilinx Zynq-7000 configurable SoC. The leaf node implementation is integrated into a cyber-physical control topology. Simulated attack scenarios show strengthened resilience to both network integrity and reconfiguration attacks. Threats attempting to disrupt process behavior are successfully thwarted by having a backup controller maintain process stability. The system ensures both safety and liveness properties even under adversarial conditions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Chiluvuri, Nayana Teja

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Patterson, Cameron D.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Baumann, William T.
• Martin, Thomas L.

• Process control systems
• cyber-physical systems
• autonomic systems
• programmable logic controller
• remote terminal unit
• human-machine interface
• Field programmable gate arrays
• trust
• configurable system-on-chip
• heterogeneous computing
• high-level synthesis

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:6122

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/56572