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Security Issues and Mitigation in Ethernet POWERLINK

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Security of Industrial Control Systems and Cyber-Physical Systems (CyberICPS 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 10166))

Abstract

Ethernet POWERLINK is an industrial Ethernet protocol created for applications with high degree of determinism, and amongst the closest to real-time (class 3 industrial Ethernet protocol). Consequently, it was developed for efficiency and short cycle times, with no security as it would only slow down the communications. In this paper, we show that most of the common known industrial Ethernet attacks cannot be carried out for Ethernet POWERLINK due to its isochronous real-time characteristics. We also show that it is still possible to perform attacks to affect such a system. We thus present five different attacks: a denial of service, a command insertion for a slave and then for a master, and impersonation of a slave and, finally, of a master. These attacks are afterwards validated on a testbed. We finally present proposals to defend against them without adding any major delay in the cyclic communications, by modifying transitions of the state machines of the protocol.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.br-automation.com/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Telecom SudParis, 9 rue Charles Fourier, 91011, Evry, France

    Jonathan Yung & Hervé Debar

  2. Airbus Group Innovations, 12 rue Pasteur, 92152, Suresnes, France

    Jonathan Yung & Louis Granboulan

Authors
  1. Jonathan Yung
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  2. Hervé Debar
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  3. Louis Granboulan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Yung .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Telecom Bretagne , Cesson Sevigne, France

    Nora Cuppens-Boulahia

  2. University of Piraeus , Piraeus, Greece

    Costas Lambrinoudakis

  3. Telecom Bretagne, Cesson Sevigne , France

    Frédéric Cuppens

  4. Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Gjøvik, Norway

    Sokratis Katsikas

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Yung, J., Debar, H., Granboulan, L. (2017). Security Issues and Mitigation in Ethernet POWERLINK. In: Cuppens-Boulahia, N., Lambrinoudakis, C., Cuppens, F., Katsikas, S. (eds) Security of Industrial Control Systems and Cyber-Physical Systems. CyberICPS 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10166. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61437-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61437-3_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61436-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61437-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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