Security challenges in cyber physical systems and internet

of things systems

Introduction:
Safety and security are the major challenges for cyber physical systems because of the serious
consequences and large attack surface. CPSs operate on physical plants which damages
themselves, people, or property when they are improperly used . .Security which is depended on
privacy is are concerned on the information. Recently it is considered as privacy is the property
of safety where security is its major need. False data entry is also constitute to an attack.

Computing system provides many models for separating the data .in addition to them
some threat models to be created in order to show the vulnerabilities. CPSs and IoT combine
physical plants and computational process and this coupling is known as the application
programming interfaces(APIs). These provide bidirectional communication between the cyber
and physical plants. This coupling is worrisome because it increases the fault rate in both the
cyber and physical plants. Many computational methods have been introduced for analyzing
systems and to identify vulnerabilities and enable resilient system design.

A Model for safety and security:

Cyber physical system architecture: ​CPS have close relationships with

embedded systems, sensors,and wireless network, but have their own
characteristics, for example, the complexity and dynamics of environment, the big
problem space and solution space are closely related with the environment, the
requirement for high reliability of the system.
In the early stage, CPS had a two-tier structure inherently,
1) the physical part
2)computing part.
The physical part sense the physical environment, collect data, and execute the
decision made by the computing part; the computing part analyze and process the
data from the physical part, and then make decision. Hyun Jung La et al. proposed
a 3-Tiers architecture of CPS :
3-Tiers architecture of CPS:
Figure 1. The three tiers of CPS architecture

Environmental Tiers​: consists of physical devices and a target environment which includes
end-users using the devices and their associated physical environment.
Service Tiers: a typical computing environment with services in SOA and CC (Cloud
Computing).
Control Tiers: to receive monitored data which are gathered though sensors, to make controlling
decisions, to find right services by consulting service framework, and to let the services invoked
on the physical device. The architecture is in Figure 1.

Cyber world and physical world are different essentially, but they are connected and affect each
other by information. One of the main features of physical world is dynamic, the same entity at
different time showed different properties. Therefore, when modeling the physical world entities,
the dynamic features should be considered in particular. In the cyber world, changes are
represented by state transitions, thus, simulating the physical world may lead to state explosion.
This is an important feature to be considered in the modeling and design process of CPS
fig2: CPS architecture based on SOA

Computing systems provide several models for sharing and separation of data . Distributed
computing provides models for shared and separate memory spaces. Fault models for
computing systems . In addition, a set of threat models and attack surfaces can be created to
describe the systems’ vulnerability to malicious activity.
CPSs and IoT systems couple physical plants and computational processes. That coupling
may be defined as models such as application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs can, in
general, provide bidirectional communication between the physical and cyber plants.
This coupling is worrisome in itself because it enlarges the fault and threat models for both the
cyber and physical subsystems. Although most methods have been focusing on network
topological characteristics and statistical analyses of data, following traditional approaches to
attack and failure detection, recently, computational formal methods have been introduced to
analyze systems, identify vulnerabilities, and enable resilient system design.
CPS ARCHITECTURE BASED ON SOA:
SOA(service-oriented architecture) is a dynamically integrating paradigm, which is used for
integrating loosely coupled services into one workflow using a standards-based software
component technology. Based on the SOA architecture, we proposed the generic CPS
architecture. The architecture is described as the following figure 2

Fig 2:CPS architecture based on SOA

There are five tiers in this architecture:
Perceive tier​ is the data source for the above tiers, can be called sensor tier. The functions of
this tier are environment awareness which mainly achieved by sensors and preliminary data
pre-processing, which provides the data to data processing tier. WSN(Wireless Sensor
Network) is one of the basic techniques of this sensor tier.
the basic techniques of this sensor tier.
Data tier​ consists of the computational devices and storage devices, providing the
heterogeneous data processing such as normalization, noise reduction, data storage and other
similar functions. This tier is the bridge between Producer and Service.
Service tier​ provides the typical functions of the whole system, including the APIs to
consumers, decision-making, task analysis, task schedule and so on. In this tier, a number of
services are deployed and interact with each other.
Execution tier​ and the perceive are the two tiers interact with the environment, the actuator
may be a physical device, a car, or a lamp. It receives the commands from the system, and
executes.
Security assurance part ​is ubiquitous in the whole system, from the access security, data
security to device security, they need a series of mechanisms to guarantee the system security
from unauthorized access or malicious attacks.

IOT-ARCHITECTURE:
A.)The Basic Model :
The most prominent model known for IoT is the 3- layer architecture as shown in Fig. 3
consisting of the Perception Layer, the Network Layer and the Application Layer
1. Perception Layer​-This layer is also known as the Device layer as it consists of
objects/devices and sensors. It acts as the skin of a living organism and its five senses to
identify objects, collect data and information. It includes technologies like RFID tags and
readers/writers, 2-D bar code labels, GPS,sensor networks and terminals.
2.​Network Layer​-This layer is also called the Transmission Layer, used to transmit and
process data provided by the Perception Layer. It works as the neural network and brain of a
human body. Technologies that work in this layer are 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, Infrared, Zigbee
etc. It helps in management of network, information service center and network center
3​.Application Layer ​-This layer emphasises on the industrial need and social division of IoT.
The main motive is to realize the level of intellectualization of industry. It covers various
virtual markets.
Fig 3:Basic model of IoT

B)The Five Layer Model :

The basic model does not take into consideration the outburst of technologies every year and
along with it the need of management methods and business models. A new architecture is
now put in practice and is the current model for IoT , which is an amalgam of the TCP/IP
model and communication model combined with the IoT requirements as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig 4: 5-layer architecture for IoT

5 layers are:
1)Object Layer
2) Object Abstraction Layer
3) Service Management Layer
4) Application Layer
5) Business Layer
 FIG 5:Buissiness layer of IoT
Differences of IoT and cyber physical systems:
IoT is something which is closely associated with the fact that how can physical devices be
connected with each other over the internet to do something useful. E.g. The automated water
supply using the smartphone app and so on. So the major aspect for IoT becomes the physical
devices and the Internet. Generally IoT is kept limited to control & monitor small devices. Such
systems have no constraints towards having the devices on a common network.

On the other hand cyber physical systems are more concerned as to how physical systems be
monitored and controlled using the cyber-space. And such physical system are generally
experimental physical systems. E.g. Atomic reactors are great example of cyber physical
systems. Such system generally need the devices and the systems on a common network. How
such systems are not forced to follow such constraint, but the industry and the community
follows them based on the requirements for the system. Some very good examples for such
system could be Radio telescopes, Thermo-nuclear reactors, Power station monitoring & control
systems etc.

At a higher level view both these domain show remarkable similarity in their solution
architecture. But these domains are different in terms of their implementation and usage​.

Challenges:
The physical plants of CPS and IoT applications vary widely, they all make common use of a
core set of computational components: processors, networks, operating systems, and middleware.
Making these systems safe and secure is especially difficult because they are long-lived systems
that cannot be easily replaced or, in some cases, even shut down Moore’s law and constantly
improving semiconductor technology have led to quick upgrade cycles that allow computer
scientists to avoid many of the problems associated with longevity. A variety of guidelines and
standards have been developed for the design of reliable CPSs. The MISRA C Guidelines for
automotive software. These coding guidelines are divided into mandatory, required and advisory
levels.

ISO 26262 for safety-related aspects of electrical/electronic systems in automobiles . This

standard concentrates on the relationship between product lifecycle and safety. DO-178C for
commercial airborne software. It defined design assurance levels . NISTIR 7628 guidelines for
smart grid cybersecurity. It describes risk assessment for smart grids and associated security
requirements. ASTM F2761 describes the required characteristics networked medical devices
from multiple manufacturers used for the care of a single high-acuity patient.

CPS ARCHITECTURE ANALYSIS AND DESIGN:

As the physical world is dynamic and complex,and the essential difference between cyber world
and physical world,lead to a lot unprecedented challenges in development ofCPS. CPS have own
characteristics different from traditional
embedded systems:Better network performance: the CPS application scenarios, such as
Intelligent Transportation, Medical CPS,require precise real-time and security services, which
bring great challenges on time-spatial and security assurance.Although some solutions have been
taken in existing networks, there are still many vulnerabilities. Networks inCPS need more
strategies in handle time and security .Heterogeneous: a variety of terminal devices, their
processing capability, security requirements,communications mechanisms are quite different.
CPS
terminal embedded devices may have ability to process information, because the limited memory
and energy, the devices' processing capacities are different. This brings great challenges in
system compositon.Adaptability: terminals in CPS application scenarios are often not fixed. The
changing of surrounding environment cause the sensing data change. A proper design of CPS
can adapt to environment automatically.According to these characteristics of CPS, some critical
problems of CPS analysis and design are introduced following.

A.Real-time control
Real-time data processing​: process queries within certain deadlines or response time bounds
.
Reliable event detection​: support highly accurate event detection despite potentially noisy,
faulty, or compromised sensor data.

Real-time routing: ​sensor data must be delivered to nRTEDBs in a timely fashion. Also,
nRTEDBs need to efficiently exchange information with each other, while controlling sensors.

Security and robustness​: to avoid the single point of attack problem discussed before in
addition to data confidentiality, integrith, and authenticity.

B. Security Assurance:
Confidentiality, integrity and availability are three important problems of system security that
need to be considered.We divide CPS into two categories, which are security critical system and
non-security critical system. Then to the former, confidentiality, integrity and availability are
very significant, and at the same time, other requirements such as physical security are also
emphasized. But to the later, integrity and availability are underlined and security is relatively
weakened. There are different requirements in different scenarios. For example, as for military
applications, the confidentiality feature is important, but in the smart home system, the real-time
requirements are emphasized.Security of CPS can be divided into the following three aspects:
perception security, which is to ensure the security and accuracy of the information collected
from physical environment; transport security, which is to prevent the data from being destroyed
during the transmission processes; processing center security, such as physical security and
safety procedures in servers or workstations.
Networking​: deal with the data aggregation, diffusion. Various sensors could generate much
data which is to be aggregated or diffusion for analyzers to process further.
Computing:​ this step is for reasoning and analyzing the data collected during monitoring to
check whether the physical process satisfies certain pre-defined criteria.
Actuation:​ execute the actions determined during the computing phase.
Based on this, a context-aware security framework for CPS was proposed, as shown in Figure 3
 Fig 3:Context-aware security framework for CPS.

C. Integration mechanism
The integration of CPS means coordination of different terminal sensors, mobile devices,
computer workstations, and networks. CPS integration has four features:

1)The heterogeneity of hardware and software,

2)The unreliability of network,
3)The mobility
4) The environmental relevance.
these features bring the main challenges of CPS integration.
These challenges derive from the complexity of the environment that the systems will need to
operate in, coupled with emerging needs to continually increase systems capabilities. These
brings concomitant increases in software development timelines and difficulty in system
composition, verification, validation, and certification.

Object Orientation, which provides a form of static modularization of application functionality,

wherein reusable objects can be composed together at compile-time to realize application
functionality; Application Modules, separates common, low-level system functionality such as
process encapsulation, memory management and networking from higher-level
application-centric functionality; Component.
Based software engineering, emphasizes the separation of concerns into self-contained black
boxes of functionality which can easily be re-used.

Architectural Issues of IoT

There are certain factors derived from the current framework which need to be considered by the
IoT architecture right from the preliminary steps of development:
Distributed open architecture with end to end characteristics, neutral access, interoperability of
heterogeneous systems, resilience to physical network disruption and clear layering. Depending
on the application, the need for security and network autonomy may differ, hence, the
availability of a physical infrastructure becomes a secondary consideration.
Architectures which move intelligent behavior at the very edge of the networks, up to users,
terminals and things. Control over personal information is out of the hands of people and
endangers their privacy, therefore, transparent and accountable IoT services with new methods of
security need to be integrated throughout the referred framework.
Based on peering of nodes, autonomic architectures should be decentralized in nature. The
communication between IoT devices can happen anywhere and anytime, therefore, it should be
done in a ad-hoc and wireless manner.

fig:IoT Stack against the Web Stack of protocols

Event-driven architectures, cloud computing technology, disconnected operations and
synchronization. .To analyze increased competition and participation encouraging the use of
market mechanisms.
 Fig :Various IoT architectures

fig:Traditional safety-critical system design makes use of a V methodology. ​Design-Time

techniques:
Design time and run-time techniques:

fig:Design time and run time techniques

Design time techniques:​Many design time and runtime techniques have been developed in
order to ensure the safety and security I CPSs and IoT.

1. Model based designing which emerged as the main stream technique in CPSs design.
The combination of formal modeling and simulation supported by model-based design
 allows for more thorough checks of safety and security properties. 2. Architectures for
CPSs can be designed to ensure that properties related to safety and
security are provided by the system and respected by its components.
3. System Synthesis Algorithms implementations of CPSs can be used to ensure that
specifications and architectures are correctly translated, avoiding the introduction of errors
that can compromise safety or security. 4. Hardware Trojans a circuit that implements an
undesirable or malicious function. The
hardware Trojan is inserted into a larger circuit in order to alter its function.
Runtime techniques:

1. Monitors safety/security case requires making a set of assumptions about the

environment and the system’s state. 2. Diagnosis complements monitoring by trying to
identify the source of a problem
during system execution. Diagnosis can help to identify strategies to minimize the effect
of the safety/security problem. 3. Secure Protocols for built-in security in modern CPS
networks has led to several
efforts to develop protocols for secure CPS communications. 4. Fingerprinting
devices entail identifying their configuration, either by actively
probing the devices with messages or passively observing their natural behavior.
Conclusion:

Finally the conclusion is that the systems that combine both physical and computer components
are becoming more complex. This systems should satisfy both safety and security properties.
But in many cases the systems fall short of our expectations and results in failures. Improving
the safety and security of CPSs and IoT systems requires the application of new techniques at
both design time and runtime as well as the diligent application of existing best practices. We
don’t have single solution to solve all these safety and security problems at once but we have
many methods in order to have the safety and security of out systems.

References:

D. N. Serpanos and A. G. Voyiatzis, “Security challenges in embedded systems,” ACM Trans. Embedded
Comput. Syst., vol. 12, no. 1s, Mar. 2013 C. Koulamas, S. Giannoulis, and A. Fournaris, “IoT
components for secure smart building environments,” in Components and Services for IoT Platforms:
Paving the Way for IoT Standards. New York, NY, USA: Springer-Verlag, 2016 H. Yoo and T. Shon,
“Grammar-based adaptive fuzzing: Evaluation on SCADA modbus protocol,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf.
Smart Grid Commun., Nov. 2016, pp. 557–563. M. U. Tariq, J. Florence, and M. Wolf, “Improving the
safety and security of wide-area cyber-physical systems through a resource-aware, service-oriented
development methodology,” in Proc. IEEE, vol. 106, no. 1, Jan. 2018, DOI: 10.1109/
JPROC.2017.2744645.
B. Cui, S. Liang, S. Chen, B. Zhao, and X. Liang, “A novel fuzzing method for Zigbee based on finite
state machine,” Int. J. Distrib. Sensor Netw., vol. 10, no. 1, p. 762891, 2014.
Information Technology—Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) v3.1.1, document ISO/IEC
20922:2016.