Title:	An open-source testbed based on the modbus protocol for cybersecurity analysis of nuclear power plants
Authors:	Brito, Israel Barbosa de
metadata.dc.contributor.email:	israel.mre@gmail.com
Orientador(es)::	Sousa Júnior, Rafael Timóteo de
Assunto::	Segurança cibernética Centrais nuclerares Processo decisório Inteligência cibernética Engenharia de dados Inteligência artificial
Issue Date:	6-Apr-2023
Data de defesa::	7-Nov-2022
Citation:	BRITO, Israel Barbosa de. An open-source testbed based on the modbus protocol for cybersecurity analysis of nuclear power plants. 2022. ix, 94 f., il. Dissertação (Mestrado em Engenharia Elétrica) — Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, 2022.
Abstract:	The possibility of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure, and in particular nuclear power plants, has prompted several efforts by academia. Many of these works aim to capture the vulnerabilities of the industrial control systems used in these plants through computer simulations and hardware in the loop configurations. However, general results in this area are limited by the cost and diversity of existing commercial equipment and protocols, as well as by the inherent complexity of the nuclear plants. This situation motivates the present dissertation to introduce a testbed for the study of cyber-attacks against a realistic simulation of a nuclear power plant. Our approach consists in surveying issues regarding realistic simulations of nuclear power plants and to design and experimentally validate a software testbed for the controlled analysis of cyberattacks against the simulated nuclear plant. The proposal integrates a simulated Modbus/TCP network environment containing basic industrial control elements implemented with open-source software components. We validate the proposed testbed architecture by performing and analyzing a representative cyberattack in the developed environment. The chosen Insider cyberattack was successful in modifying an operational variable that is used to manage the nuclear power plant, while the unmodified value was displayed to the control operators. This attack also allows to explain how the proposed testbed can be used for the analysis of other cybernetic attacks. The potential use of the proposed testbed to study intrusion detection was also explored. To show how Artificial Intelligence techniques could be used to detect attacks; we collected 6 datasets from our testbed, each containing data from normal operation as well as different attacks. These datasets were used to train 5 different Machine Learning algorithms, and their relative accuracy was evaluated. This kind of analysis promisse new utilizations and future directions for the work, as for instance, for implementing defensive mechanisms in the network topology of the industrial control system to better protect the nuclear power plant from cyberattacks.
metadata.dc.description.unidade:	Faculdade de Tecnologia (FT) Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica (FT ENE)
Description:	Dissertação (mestrado) — Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, 2022.
metadata.dc.description.ppg:	Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Elétrica, Mestrado Profissional
Appears in Collections:	Teses, dissertações e produtos pós-doutorado

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