Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems

Richard J. Thomas; Tom Chothia

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_7

Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems

Richard J. Thomas^*, Tom Chothia

^*Corresponding author for this work

Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

1 Citation (Scopus)

345 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Compared to many other areas of cyber security, vulnerabilities in industrial control systems (ICS) can be poorly understood. These systems form part of critical national infrastructure, where asset owners may not understand the security landscape and have potentially incorrect security assumptions for these closed source, operational technology (OT) systems. ICS vulnerability reports give useful information about single vulnerabilities, but there is a lack of guidance telling ICS owners what to look for next, or how to find these. In this paper, we analyse 9 years of ICS Advisory vulnerability announcements and we recategorise the vulnerabilities based on the detection methods and tools that could be used to find these weaknesses. We find that 8 categories are enough to cover 95% of the vulnerabilities in the dataset. This provides a guide for ICS owners to the most likely new vulnerabilities they may find in their systems and the best ways to detect them. We validate our proposed vulnerability categories by analysing a further 6 months of ICS Advisory reports, which shows that our categories continue to dominate the reported weaknesses. We further validate our proposed detection methods by applying them to a range of ICS equipment and finding four new critical security vulnerabilities.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Computer Security - ESORICS 2020 International Workshops, CyberICPS, SECPRE, and ADIoT, 2020, Revised Selected Papers
Editors	Sokratis Katsikas, Frédéric Cuppens, Nora Cuppens, Costas Lambrinoudakis, Christos Kalloniatis, John Mylopoulos, Annie Antón, Stefanos Gritzalis, Weizhi Meng, Steven Furnell
Publisher	Springer
Pages	100-116
Number of pages	17
ISBN (Print)	9783030643294
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_7
Publication status	Published - 17 Dec 2020
Event	6th International Workshop on Security of Industrial Control Systems and Cyber-Physical Systems, CyberICPS 2020, 2nd International Workshop on Security and Privacy Requirements Engineering, SECPRE 2020, and 3rd International Workshop on Attacks and Defenses for Internet-of-Things, ADIoT 2020, held in conjunction with 25th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2020 - Guildford, United Kingdom Duration: 14 Sept 2020 → 18 Sept 2020

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume	12501 LNCS
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	6th International Workshop on Security of Industrial Control Systems and Cyber-Physical Systems, CyberICPS 2020, 2nd International Workshop on Security and Privacy Requirements Engineering, SECPRE 2020, and 3rd International Workshop on Attacks and Defenses for Internet-of-Things, ADIoT 2020, held in conjunction with 25th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2020
Country/Territory	United Kingdom
City	Guildford
Period	14/09/20 → 18/09/20

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgements. Funding for this paper was provided by the National Cyber Security Centre UK (NCSC UK), Research Institute in Trustworthy Inter-Connected Cyber-Physical Systems (RITICS) and the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN). We thank the Bristol Cyber Security Group for providing access to an additional device for testing.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Theoretical Computer Science
General Computer Science

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_7

cybericps_paperFinal published version, 1.92 MB

Effective Solutions for the NIS Directive - Supply Chain Requirements for Third Party Devices
Chothia, T. (Principal Investigator), Thomas, R. (Co-Investigator) & Easton, J. (Co-Investigator)
1/01/19 → 30/09/21
Project: Other Government Departments

RITICS Learning from Vulnerabilities Dataset
Thomas, R. (Creator) & Chothia, T. (Creator), University of Birmingham, 18 Sept 2020
DOI: 10.25500/edata.bham.00000547
Dataset

Cite this

Thomas, R. J., & Chothia, T. (2020). Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems. In S. Katsikas, F. Cuppens, N. Cuppens, C. Lambrinoudakis, C. Kalloniatis, J. Mylopoulos, A. Antón, S. Gritzalis, W. Meng, & S. Furnell (Eds.), Computer Security - ESORICS 2020 International Workshops, CyberICPS, SECPRE, and ADIoT, 2020, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 100-116). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 12501 LNCS). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_7

Thomas, Richard J. ; Chothia, Tom. / Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems. Computer Security - ESORICS 2020 International Workshops, CyberICPS, SECPRE, and ADIoT, 2020, Revised Selected Papers. editor / Sokratis Katsikas ; Frédéric Cuppens ; Nora Cuppens ; Costas Lambrinoudakis ; Christos Kalloniatis ; John Mylopoulos ; Annie Antón ; Stefanos Gritzalis ; Weizhi Meng ; Steven Furnell. Springer, 2020. pp. 100-116 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)).

@inproceedings{d8fdfeb324b4425cb20404cba092c52e,

title = "Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems",

abstract = "Compared to many other areas of cyber security, vulnerabilities in industrial control systems (ICS) can be poorly understood. These systems form part of critical national infrastructure, where asset owners may not understand the security landscape and have potentially incorrect security assumptions for these closed source, operational technology (OT) systems. ICS vulnerability reports give useful information about single vulnerabilities, but there is a lack of guidance telling ICS owners what to look for next, or how to find these. In this paper, we analyse 9 years of ICS Advisory vulnerability announcements and we recategorise the vulnerabilities based on the detection methods and tools that could be used to find these weaknesses. We find that 8 categories are enough to cover 95% of the vulnerabilities in the dataset. This provides a guide for ICS owners to the most likely new vulnerabilities they may find in their systems and the best ways to detect them. We validate our proposed vulnerability categories by analysing a further 6 months of ICS Advisory reports, which shows that our categories continue to dominate the reported weaknesses. We further validate our proposed detection methods by applying them to a range of ICS equipment and finding four new critical security vulnerabilities.",

author = "Thomas, {Richard J.} and Tom Chothia",

note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgements. Funding for this paper was provided by the National Cyber Security Centre UK (NCSC UK), Research Institute in Trustworthy Inter-Connected Cyber-Physical Systems (RITICS) and the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN). We thank the Bristol Cyber Security Group for providing access to an additional device for testing. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Copyright: Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.; 6th International Workshop on Security of Industrial Control Systems and Cyber-Physical Systems, CyberICPS 2020, 2nd International Workshop on Security and Privacy Requirements Engineering, SECPRE 2020, and 3rd International Workshop on Attacks and Defenses for Internet-of-Things, ADIoT 2020, held in conjunction with 25th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2020 ; Conference date: 14-09-2020 Through 18-09-2020",

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Thomas, RJ & Chothia, T 2020, Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems. in S Katsikas, F Cuppens, N Cuppens, C Lambrinoudakis, C Kalloniatis, J Mylopoulos, A Antón, S Gritzalis, W Meng & S Furnell (eds), Computer Security - ESORICS 2020 International Workshops, CyberICPS, SECPRE, and ADIoT, 2020, Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 12501 LNCS, Springer, pp. 100-116, 6th International Workshop on Security of Industrial Control Systems and Cyber-Physical Systems, CyberICPS 2020, 2nd International Workshop on Security and Privacy Requirements Engineering, SECPRE 2020, and 3rd International Workshop on Attacks and Defenses for Internet-of-Things, ADIoT 2020, held in conjunction with 25th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2020, Guildford, United Kingdom, 14/09/20. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_7

Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems. / Thomas, Richard J.; Chothia, Tom.
Computer Security - ESORICS 2020 International Workshops, CyberICPS, SECPRE, and ADIoT, 2020, Revised Selected Papers. ed. / Sokratis Katsikas; Frédéric Cuppens; Nora Cuppens; Costas Lambrinoudakis; Christos Kalloniatis; John Mylopoulos; Annie Antón; Stefanos Gritzalis; Weizhi Meng; Steven Furnell. Springer, 2020. p. 100-116 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 12501 LNCS).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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N2 - Compared to many other areas of cyber security, vulnerabilities in industrial control systems (ICS) can be poorly understood. These systems form part of critical national infrastructure, where asset owners may not understand the security landscape and have potentially incorrect security assumptions for these closed source, operational technology (OT) systems. ICS vulnerability reports give useful information about single vulnerabilities, but there is a lack of guidance telling ICS owners what to look for next, or how to find these. In this paper, we analyse 9 years of ICS Advisory vulnerability announcements and we recategorise the vulnerabilities based on the detection methods and tools that could be used to find these weaknesses. We find that 8 categories are enough to cover 95% of the vulnerabilities in the dataset. This provides a guide for ICS owners to the most likely new vulnerabilities they may find in their systems and the best ways to detect them. We validate our proposed vulnerability categories by analysing a further 6 months of ICS Advisory reports, which shows that our categories continue to dominate the reported weaknesses. We further validate our proposed detection methods by applying them to a range of ICS equipment and finding four new critical security vulnerabilities.

AB - Compared to many other areas of cyber security, vulnerabilities in industrial control systems (ICS) can be poorly understood. These systems form part of critical national infrastructure, where asset owners may not understand the security landscape and have potentially incorrect security assumptions for these closed source, operational technology (OT) systems. ICS vulnerability reports give useful information about single vulnerabilities, but there is a lack of guidance telling ICS owners what to look for next, or how to find these. In this paper, we analyse 9 years of ICS Advisory vulnerability announcements and we recategorise the vulnerabilities based on the detection methods and tools that could be used to find these weaknesses. We find that 8 categories are enough to cover 95% of the vulnerabilities in the dataset. This provides a guide for ICS owners to the most likely new vulnerabilities they may find in their systems and the best ways to detect them. We validate our proposed vulnerability categories by analysing a further 6 months of ICS Advisory reports, which shows that our categories continue to dominate the reported weaknesses. We further validate our proposed detection methods by applying them to a range of ICS equipment and finding four new critical security vulnerabilities.

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Thomas RJ , Chothia T. Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems. In Katsikas S, Cuppens F, Cuppens N, Lambrinoudakis C, Kalloniatis C, Mylopoulos J, Antón A, Gritzalis S, Meng W, Furnell S, editors, Computer Security - ESORICS 2020 International Workshops, CyberICPS, SECPRE, and ADIoT, 2020, Revised Selected Papers. Springer. 2020. p. 100-116. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)). doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_7

Learning from Vulnerabilities - Categorising, Understanding and Detecting Weaknesses in Industrial Control Systems

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Projects

Effective Solutions for the NIS Directive - Supply Chain Requirements for Third Party Devices

Datasets

RITICS Learning from Vulnerabilities Dataset

Cite this