Biblio

The class of Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) includes cyber-physical systems leveraging on self-x technologies that make them capable to learn, adapt to changes, and reason under uncertainties in possibly critical applications and evolving environments. In the last decade, there has been a growing interest in enabling artificial intelligence technologies, such as advanced machine learning, new threats, such as adversarial attacks, and certification challenges, due to the lack of sufficient explainability. However, in order to be trustworthy, those systems also need to be dependable, secure, and resilient according to well-established taxonomies, methodologies, and tools. Therefore, several aspects need to be addressed for TAS, ranging from proper taxonomic classification to the identification of research opportunities and challenges. Given such a context, in this paper address relevant taxonomies and research perspectives in the field of TAS. We start from basic definitions and move towards future perspectives, regulations, and emerging technologies supporting development and operation of TAS.

In recent years, the Smart Grid has increasingly integrated cutting-edge technologies that generate several benefits for all the stakeholders involved, such as a more accurate billing system and enhanced Demand Response procedures. However, this modernization also brings with it diverse cyber security and privacy issues, which sets the necessity for developing a security platform specifically tailored to this scenario. In this paper, we present SealedGRID, which proposes a flexible architecture that provides security services at all levels by implementing Trusted Execution Environments on their devices, together with advanced authentication and authorization mechanisms, as well as privacy preserving techniques. These technologies are presented in depth and a final security analysis is conducted, which highlights the contributions of this project.

Cyber-attacks against Industrial Control Systems (ICS) can lead to catastrophic events which can be prevented by the use of security measures such as the Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS). In this work we experimentally demonstrate how to exploit the configuration vulnerabilities of SNORT one of the most adopted IPSs to significantly degrade the effectiveness of the IPS and consequently allowing successful cyber-attacks. We illustrate how to design a batch script able to retrieve and modify the configuration files of SNORT in order to disable its ability to detect and block Denial of Service (DoS) and ARP poisoning-based Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks against a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) in an ICS network. Experimental tests performed on a water distribution testbed show that, despite the presence of IPS, the DoS and ARP spoofed packets reach the destination causing respectively the disconnection of the PLC from the ICS network and the modification of packets payload.