Damn Vulnerable Chemical Process

Attackers and researchers have shown numerous ways to compromise and control the digital systems involved in process control (plants, grids, cars). Little information is available what to actually do with those controls. A single bit flip can engage the burner under a tank of chemicals, but the reaction will still take hours to complete regardless of the state of the controller outputs. Changing the state of the outputs does not immediately put the process into a vulnerable state. An attacker needs to take into account the timing and state of the system and act when the process is in the vulnerable state. Designing an attack on a cyber-physical systems leads to unconventional hacking and interesting computer science challenges. Thus, DoS attacks on controlls in the physical domain do not deny process dynamics. In fact, if timed wisely, DoS attack allow manipulation of the process at will. Whoever thinks that cryptography will safe the world is wrong. Due to the specifics of controll principles and their implementation in the equipment, DoS attacks allow manipulation of process controls even if the communication is authenticated. On the example of the DoS attacks on controller inputs and outputs at the level of communication links the lecture will take the audience through all the stages and details of (i) designing and (ii) implementing such attacks to cause physical damage. The experiments are conducted on the realistic model of a chemical plant used in process engineering research.