• Title/Summary/Keyword: Cyber Assets

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A novel approach for analyzing the nuclear supply chain cyber-attack surface

  • Eggers, Shannon
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.53 no.3
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    • pp.879-887
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    • 2021
  • The nuclear supply chain attack surface is a large, complex network of interconnected stakeholders and activities. The global economy has widened and deepened the supply chain, resulting in larger numbers of geographically dispersed locations and increased difficulty ensuring the authenticity and security of critical digital assets. Although the nuclear industry has made significant strides in securing facilities from cyber-attacks, the supply chain remains vulnerable. This paper discusses supply chain threats and vulnerabilities that are often overlooked in nuclear cyber supply chain risk analysis. A novel supply chain cyber-attack surface diagram is provided to assist with enumeration of risks and to examine the complex issues surrounding the requirements for securing hardware, firmware, software, and system information throughout the entire supply chain lifecycle. This supply chain cyber-attack surface diagram provides a dashboard that security practitioners and researchers can use to identify gaps in current cyber supply chain practices and develop new risk-informed, cyber supply chain tools and processes.

AN ANALYSIS OF TECHNICAL SECURITY CONTROL REQUIREMENTS FOR DIGITAL I&C SYSTEMS IN NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

  • Song, Jae-Gu;Lee, Jung-Woon;Park, Gee-Yong;Kwon, Kee-Choon;Lee, Dong-Young;Lee, Cheol-Kwon
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.45 no.5
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    • pp.637-652
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    • 2013
  • Instrumentation and control systems in nuclear power plants have been digitalized for the purpose of maintenance and precise operation. This digitalization, however, brings out issues related to cyber security. In the most recent past, international standard organizations, regulatory institutes, and research institutes have performed a number of studies addressing these systems cyber security.. In order to provide information helpful to the system designers in their application of cyber security for the systems, this paper presents methods and considerations to define attack vectors in a target system, to review and select the requirements in the Regulatory Guide 5.71, and to integrate the results to identify applicable technical security control requirements. In this study, attack vectors are analyzed through the vulnerability analyses and penetration tests with a simplified safety system, and the elements of critical digital assets acting as attack vectors are identified. Among the security control requirements listed in Appendices B and C to Regulatory Guide 5.71, those that should be implemented into the systems are selected and classified in groups of technical security control requirements using the results of the attack vector analysis. For the attack vector elements of critical digital assets, all the technical security control requirements are evaluated to determine whether they are applicable and effective, and considerations in this evaluation are also discussed. The technical security control requirements in three important categories of access control, monitoring and logging, and encryption are derived and grouped according to the elements of attack vectors as results for the sample safety system.

Probabilistic safety assessment-based importance analysis of cyber-attacks on nuclear power plants

  • Park, Jong Woo;Lee, Seung Jun
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.51 no.1
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    • pp.138-145
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    • 2019
  • With the application of digital technology to safety-critical infrastructures, cyber-attacks have emerged as one of the new dangerous threats. In safety-critical infrastructures such as a nuclear power plant (NPP), a cyber-attack could have serious consequences by initiating dangerous events or rendering important safety systems unavailable. Since a cyber-attack is conducted intentionally, numerous possible cases should be considered for developing a cyber security system, such as the attack paths, methods, and potential target systems. Therefore, prior to developing a risk-informed cyber security strategy, the importance of cyber-attacks and significant critical digital assets (CDAs) should be analyzed. In this work, an importance analysis method for cyber-attacks on an NPP was proposed using the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) method. To develop an importance analysis framework for cyber-attacks, possible cyber-attacks were identified with failure modes, and a PSA model for cyber-attacks was developed. For case studies, the quantitative evaluations of cyber-attack scenarios were performed using the proposed method. By using quantitative importance of cyber-attacks and identifying significant CDAs that must be defended against cyber-attacks, it is possible to develop an efficient and reliable defense strategy against cyber-attacks on NPPs.

Cyber attack taxonomy for digital environment in nuclear power plants

  • Kim, Seungmin;Heo, Gyunyoung;Zio, Enrico;Shin, Jinsoo;Song, Jae-gu
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.52 no.5
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    • pp.995-1001
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    • 2020
  • With the development of digital instrumentation and control (I&C) devices, cyber security at nuclear power plants (NPPs) has become a hot issue. The Stuxnet, which destroyed Iran's uranium enrichment facility in 2010, suggests that NPPs could even lead to an accident involving the release of radioactive materials cyber-attacks. However, cyber security research on industrial control systems (ICSs) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems is relatively inadequate compared to information technology (IT) and further it is difficult to study cyber-attack taxonomy for NPPs considering the characteristics of ICSs. The advanced research of cyber-attack taxonomy does not reflect the architectural and inherent characteristics of NPPs and lacks a systematic countermeasure strategy. Therefore, it is necessary to more systematically check the consistency of operators and regulators related to cyber security, as in regulatory guide 5.71 (RG.5.71) and regulatory standard 015 (RS.015). For this reason, this paper attempts to suggest a template for cyber-attack taxonomy based on the characteristics of NPPs and exemplifies a specific cyber-attack case in the template. In addition, this paper proposes a systematic countermeasure strategy by matching the countermeasure with critical digital assets (CDAs). The cyber-attack cases investigated using the proposed cyber-attack taxonomy can be used as data for evaluation and validation of cyber security conformance for digital devices to be applied, and as effective prevention and mitigation for cyber-attacks of NPPs.

A Study on the Damage of Red and Blue Painting of the Wooden Cultural Assets by Using the Loaded Stream Extinguishant (강화액 소화약제에 의한 목조 문화재 단청의 훼손에 관한 연구)

  • Lee, Chang-Woo;Choi, Don-Mook
    • Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.59-65
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    • 2009
  • The aim of these studies is to confirm the red and blue painting damages during the fire suppression of wooden cultural assets by using the loaded stream charge extinguishant. As a results of these experiments, the ingredients of extinguishant existing on the surface of wooden cultural assets were perfectly eliminated by the water washing only. Any changes on the surface of wooden cultural assets couldn't be detected. Moreover, any color changes of the red and blue painting didn't occur.

AVOIDITALS: Enhanced Cyber-attack Taxonomy in Securing Information Technology Infrastructure

  • Syafrizal, Melwin;Selamat, Siti Rahayu;Zakaria, Nurul Azma
    • International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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    • v.21 no.8
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    • pp.1-12
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    • 2021
  • An operation of an organization is currently using a digital environment which opens to potential cyber-attacks. These phenomena become worst as the cyberattack landscape is changing rapidly. The impact of cyber-attacks varies depending on the scope of the organization and the value of assets that need to be protected. It is difficult to assess the damage to an organization from cyberattacks due to a lack of understanding of tools, metrics, and knowledge on the type of attacks and their impacts. Hence, this paper aims to identify domains and sub-domains of cyber-attack taxonomy to facilitate the understanding of cyber-attacks. Four phases are carried in this research: identify existing cyber-attack taxonomy, determine and classify domains and sub-domains of cyber-attack, and construct the enhanced cyber-attack taxonomy. The existing cyber-attack taxonomies are analyzed, domains and sub-domains are selected based on the focus and objectives of the research, and the proposed taxonomy named AVOIDITALS Cyber-attack Taxonomy is constructed. AVOIDITALS consists of 8 domains, 105 sub-domains, 142 sub-sub-domains, and 90 other sub-sub-domains that act as a guideline to assist administrators in determining cyber-attacks through cyber-attacks pattern identification that commonly occurred on digital infrastructure and provide the best prevention method to minimize impact. This research can be further developed in line with the emergence of new types and categories of current cyberattacks and the future.

Analysing Current state of Identifying Critical digital assets And Cyber security control for Nuclear Facility (원자력발전소의 필수디지털 자산 식별 및 보안 조치 현황 분석)

  • Kim, Sangwoo;Shin, Ick-Hyun;Kwon, Kook Heui;Byun, Ye eun
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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    • 2015.05a
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    • pp.264-266
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    • 2015
  • Currently as cyber threats grow up targeting nuclear power plants(NPP), licensees must guarantee that computer and information systems of nuclear facilities can be adequately protected against cyber attack. Especially critical system that cause illegal transfer of nuclear material and adverse impact to public safety need protecting. In this paper, we surveying the cyber threat examples targeted at NPP, and taxonomy the method of cyber security for NPPs in korea through analyzing the methodology to identify critical system and address cyber security controls for nuclear facilities.

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Cyber risk measurement via loss distribution approach and GARCH model

  • Sanghee Kim;Seongjoo Song
    • Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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    • v.30 no.1
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    • pp.75-94
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    • 2023
  • The growing trend of cyber risk has put forward the importance of cyber risk management. Cyber risk is defined as an accidental or intentional risk related to information and technology assets. Although cyber risk is a subset of operational risk, it is reported to be handled differently from operational risk due to its different features of the loss distribution. In this study, we aim to detect the characteristics of cyber loss and find a suitable model by measuring value at risk (VaR). We use the loss distribution approach (LDA) and the time series model to describe cyber losses of financial and non-financial business sectors, provided in SAS® OpRisk Global Data. Peaks over threshold (POT) method is also incorporated to improve the risk measurement. For the financial sector, the LDA and GARCH model with POT perform better than those without POT, respectively. The same result is obtained for the non-financial sector, although the differences are not significant. We also build a two-dimensional model reflecting the dependence structure between financial and non-financial sectors through a bivariate copula and check the model adequacy through VaR.

A Study on ICS Security Information Collection Method Using CTI Model (CTI 모델 활용 제어시스템 보안정보 수집 방안 연구)

  • Choi, Jongwon;Kim, Yesol;Min, Byung-gil
    • Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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    • v.28 no.2
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    • pp.471-484
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    • 2018
  • Recently, cyber threats are frequently occurring in ICS(industrial control systems) of government agencies, infrastructure, and manufacturing companies. In order to cope with such cyber threats, it is necessary to apply CTI to ICS. For this purpose, a security information collection system is needed. However, it is difficult to install security solution in control devices such as PLC. Therefor, it is difficult to collect security information of ICS. In addition, there is a problem that the security information format generated in various assets is different. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an efficient method to collect ICS security information. We utilize CybOX/STIX/TAXII CTI models that are easy to apply to ICS. Using this model, we designed the formats to collect security information of ICS assets. We created formats for system logs, IDS logs, and EWS application logs of ICS assets using Windows and Linux. In addition, we designed and implemented a security information collection system that reflects the designed formats. This system can be used to apply monitoring system and CTI to future ICS.

Survey on the use of security metrics on attack graph

  • Lee, Gyung-Min;Kim, Huy-Kang
    • Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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    • v.23 no.12
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    • pp.95-105
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    • 2018
  • As the IT industry developed, the information held by the company soon became a corporate asset. As this information has value as an asset, the number and scale of various cyber attacks which targeting enterprises and institutions is increasing day by day. Therefore, research are being carried out to protect the assets from cyber attacks by using the attack graph to identify the possibility and risk of various attacks in advance and prepare countermeasures against the attacks. In the attack graph, security metric is used as a measure for determining the importance of each asset or the risk of an attack. This is a key element of the attack graph used as a criterion for determining which assets should be protected first or which attack path should be removed first. In this survey, we research trends of various security metrics used in attack graphs and classify the research according to application viewpoints, use of CVSS(Common Vulnerability Scoring System), and detail metrics. Furthermore, we discussed how to graft the latest security technologies, such as MTD(Moving Target Defense) or SDN(Software Defined Network), onto the attack graphs.