RT Journal Article
T1 Covert Channels-based Stealth Attacks in Industry 4.0
A1 Alcaraz-Tello, María Cristina
A1 Bernieri, Giuseppe
A1 Pascucci, Federica
A1 Lopez, Javier
A1 Setola, Roberto
K1 Seguridad informática
AB Industry 4.0 advent opens several cyber-threats scenarios originally designed for classic information technology, drawing the attention to serious risks for the modern industrial control networks. To cope with this problem, in this paper we address the security issues related to covert channels applied to industrial networks, identifying the new vulnerability points when information technologies converge with operational technologies such as edge computing infrastructures. Specifically, we define two signaling strategies where we exploit the ModbusTCP protocol as target to set up a covert channel. Once the threat channel is established, passive and active offensive methodologies are further exploited by implementing and testing them on a real Industrial Internet of Things testbed. The experimental results highlight the potential damage of such specific threats and the easy extrapolation of the attacks to other types of channels in order to show the new risks for the Industry 4.0. Related to this, we discuss some countermeasures offering an overview of possible mitigation and defensive measures.
PB IEEE Xplore
YR 2019
FD 2019-05-15
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10630/36355
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10630/36355
LA eng
NO C. Alcaraz, G. Bernieri, F. Pascucci, J. Lopez and R. Setola, "Covert Channels-Based Stealth Attacks in Industry 4.0," in IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 3980-3988, Dec. 2019, doi: 10.1109/JSYST.2019.2912308
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 4 mar 2026