• 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.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.11b
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• pp.294-295
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• 2007

The importance of security is increased in power industry. Recently Power IT networks are attacked in cyber space and demage of attack become increased. For solving the problems, many research studies for network security enhancement are globally carried out in the world. In this paper, we introduce recent cyber attack cases, efforts for enhancing cyber safeness and put into perspective of potential security areas for power IT areas.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
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• 2020.07a
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• pp.111-114
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• 2020

우리나라에 대한 사이버 공격의 배후로 추정되는 북한의 사이버조직에 우리는 얼마나 알고 있을까? 사이버 공간의 특성상 공격 흔적이 남지 않기에 언론사들은 북한의 사이버조직과 관련하여 일관된 정보를 거의 제공하지 못하고 있다. 따라서 갈수록 진화하는 북한의 사이버 공격에 효과적으로 대비하기 위해 본 논문에서는 비록 인터넷에 공개된 자료(논문, 기사 등)라 할지라도 이를 통해서 북한 사이버조직 현황 및 주요 공격사례를 중심으로 관련 정보를 살펴보고자 한다.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.165-171
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• 2018

The most threatening attack that has become a hot topic of recent IT security is APT Attack.. So far, there is no way to respond to APT attacks except by using artificial intelligence techniques. Here, we have implemented a machine learning algorithm for analyzing cyber threat data using machine learning method, using a data set that collects cyber attack cases using Scikit Learn, a big data machine learning framework. The result showed an attack classification accuracy close to 70%. This result can be developed into the algorithm of the security control system in the future.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.119-136
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• 2021

Since the global spread of COVID-19, social distancing and untact service implementation have spread rapidly. With the transition to a non-face-to-face environment such as telework and remote classes, cyber security threats have increased, and a lot of cyber compromises have also occurred. In this study, cyber-attacks and response cases related to COVID-19 are summarized in four aspects: cyber fraud, cyber-attacks on companies related to COVID-19 and healthcare sector, cyber-attacks on untact services such as telework, and preparation of untact services security for post-covid 19. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, related events such as vaccination information and payment of national disaster aid continued to be used as bait for smishing and phishing. In the aspect of cyber-attacks on companies related to COVID-19 and healthcare sector, we can see that the damage was rapidly increasing as state-supported hackers attack those companies to obtain research results related to the COVID-19, and hackers chose medical institutions as targets with an efficient ransomware attack approach by changing 'spray and pray' strategy to 'big-game hunting'. Companies using untact services such as telework are experiencing cyber breaches due to insufficient security settings, non-installation of security patches, and vulnerabilities in systems constituting untact services such as VPN. In response to these cyber incidents, as a case of cyber fraud countermeasures, security notices to preventing cyber fraud damage to the public was announced, and security guidelines and ransomware countermeasures were provided to organizations related to COVID-19 and medical institutions. In addition, for companies that use and provide untact services, security vulnerability finding and system development environment security inspection service were provided by Government funding programs. We also looked at the differences in the role of the government and the target of security notices between domestic and overseas response cases. Lastly, considering the development of untact services by industry in preparation for post-COVID-19, supply chain security, cloud security, development security, and IoT security were suggested as common security reinforcement measures.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.17-29
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• 2017

Various cyber attacks against our society and the government are continuing, and cases and damages are reported from time to time. And the area of cyber attack is not limited to cyberspace, but it is expanding into physical domain and affecting it. In the military arena, we have established and implemented the principle of responding proportionally to enemy physical attacks. This proportionality principle is also required in the version where the region is expanding. In order to apply it, it is necessary to have a quantitative and qualitative countermeasure against cyber attack. However, due to the nature of cyber attacks, it is not easy to assess the damage accurately and it is difficult to respond to the proportionality principle and the proportional nature. In this study, we calculated the damage scale by quantitatively and qualitatively evaluating the cyber attack damage using the Gorden-Lobe model and the security scoring technique based on the scenario. It is expected that the calculated results will be provided as appropriate level and criterion to counteract cyber attack.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.865-889
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• 2019

The need for cyber resilience is increasingly important in our technology-dependent society where computing devices and data have been, and will continue to be, the target of cyber-attackers, particularly advanced persistent threat (APT) and nation-state/sponsored actors. APT and nation-state/sponsored actors tend to be more sophisticated, having access to significantly more resources and time to facilitate their attacks, which in most cases are not financially driven (unlike typical cyber-criminals). For example, such threat actors often utilize a broad range of attack vectors, cyber and/or physical, and constantly evolve their attack tactics. Thus, having up-to-date and detailed information of APT's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) facilitates the design of effective defense strategies as the focus of this paper. Specifically, we posit the importance of taxonomies in categorizing cyber-attacks. Note, however, that existing information about APT attack campaigns is fragmented across practitioner, government (including intelligence/classified), and academic publications, and existing taxonomies generally have a narrow scope (e.g., to a limited number of APT campaigns). Therefore, in this paper, we leverage the Cyber Kill Chain (CKC) model to "decompose" any complex attack and identify the relevant characteristics of such attacks. We then comprehensively analyze more than 40 APT campaigns disclosed before 2018 to build our taxonomy. Such taxonomy can facilitate incident response and cyber threat hunting by aiding in understanding of the potential attacks to organizations as well as which attacks may surface. In addition, the taxonomy can allow national security and intelligence agencies and businesses to share their analysis of ongoing, sensitive APT campaigns without the need to disclose detailed information about the campaigns. It can also notify future security policies and mitigation strategy formulation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.657-673
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• 2019

As various IT and OT systems such as Electronic Chart Display and Information System and Automatic Identification System are used for ships, security elements that take into account even the ship's construction and navigation environment are required. However, cyber security research on the ship and shipbuilding ICT equipment industries is still lacking, and there is a lack of systematic methodologies through threat modeling. In this paper, the Data Flow Diagram was established in consideration of stakeholders approaching the ship system. Based on the Attack Library, which collects the security vulnerabilities and cases of ship systems, STRIDE methodologies and threat modeling using the Attack Tree are designed to identify possible threats from ships and to present ship cyber security measures.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.673-689
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• 2022

We propose an APT attack scoring method as a part of the process for detecting and responding to APT attacks. First, unlike previous work that considered inconsistent and subjective factors determined by cyber security experts in the process of scoring cyber attacks, we identify quantifiable factors from components of MITRE ATT&CK^Ⓡ techniques and propose a method of quantifying each identified factor. Then, we propose a method of calculating the score of the unit attack technique from the quantified factors, and the score of the entire APT attack composed of one or more multiple attack techniques. We present the possibility of quantification to determine the threat level and urgency of cyber attacks by applying the proposed scoring method to the APT attack reports, which contains the hundreds of APT attack cases occurred worldwide. Using our work, it will be possible to determine whether actual cyber attacks have occurred in the process of detecting APT attacks, and respond to more urgent and important cyber attacks by estimating the priority of APT attacks.