Cody H. Fleming

Georgios Bakirtzis, Tim Sherburne, Stephen Adams et al.

System complexity has become ubiquitous in the design, assessment, and implementation of practical and useful cyber-physical systems. This increased complexity is impacting the management of models necessary for designing cyber-physical systems that are able to take into account a number of ``-ilities'', such that they are safe and secure and ultimately resilient to disruption of service. We propose an ontological metamodel for system design that augments an already existing industry metamodel to capture the relationships between various model elements and safety, security, and resilient considerations. Employing this metamodel leads to more cohesive and structured modeling efforts with an overall increase in scalability, usability, and unification of already existing models. In turn, this leads to a mission-oriented perspective in designing security defenses and resilience mechanisms to combat undesirable behaviors. We illustrate this metamodel in an open-source GraphQL implementation, which can interface with a number of modeling languages. We support our proposed metamodel with a detailed demonstration using an oil and gas pipeline model.

Georgios Bakirtzis, Fabrizio Genovese, Cody H. Fleming

Our work focuses on modeling the security of systems from their component-level designs. Towards this goal, we develop a categorical formalism to model attacker actions. Equipping the categorical formalism with algebras produces two interesting results for security modeling. First, using the Yoneda lemma, we can model attacker reconnaissance missions. In this context, the Yoneda lemma shows us that if two system representations, one being complete and the other being the attacker's incomplete view, agree at every possible test, they behave the same. The implication is that attackers can still successfully exploit the system even with incomplete information. Second, we model the potential changes to the system via an exploit. An exploit either manipulates the interactions between system components, such as providing the wrong values to a sensor, or changes the components themselves, such as controlling a global positioning system (GPS). One additional benefit of using category theory is that mathematical operations can be represented as formal diagrams, helpful in applying this analysis in a model-based design setting. We illustrate this modeling framework using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) cyber-physical system model. We demonstrate and model two types of attacks (1) a rewiring attack, which violates data integrity, and (2) a rewriting attack, which violates availability.

Georgios Bakirtzis, Garrett L. Ward, Christopher J. Deloglos et al.

Systems modeling practice lacks security analysis tools that can interface with modeling languages to facilitate security by design. Security by design is a necessity in the age of safety critical cyber-physical systems, where security violations can cause hazards. Currently, the overlap between security and safety is narrow. But deploying cyber-physical systems means that today's adversaries can intentionally trigger accidents. By implementing security assessment tools for modeling languages we are better able to address threats earlier in the system's lifecycle and, therefore, assure their safe and secure behavior in their eventual deployment. We posit that cyber-physical systems security modeling is practiced insufficiently because it is still addressed similarly to information technology systems.

Georgios Bakirtzis, Brandon J. Simon, Aidan G. Collins et al.

Applying security as a lifecycle practice is becoming increasingly important to combat targeted attacks in safety-critical systems. Among others there are two significant challenges in this area: (1) the need for models that can characterize a realistic system in the absence of an implementation and (2) an automated way to associate attack vector information; that is, historical data, to such system models. We propose the cybersecurity body of knowledge (CYBOK), which takes in sufficiently characteristic models of systems and acts as a search engine for potential attack vectors. CYBOK is fundamentally an algorithmic approach to vulnerability exploration, which is a significant extension to the body of knowledge it builds upon. By using CYBOK, security analysts and system designers can work together to assess the overall security posture of systems early in their lifecycle, during major design decisions and before final product designs. Consequently, assisting in applying security earlier and throughout the systems lifecycle.

Georgios Bakirtzis, Brandon J. Simon, Cody H. Fleming et al.

Today, there is a plethora of software security tools employing visualizations that enable the creation of useful and effective interactive security analyst dashboards. Such dashboards can assist the analyst to understand the data at hand and, consequently, to conceive more targeted preemption and mitigation security strategies. Despite the recent advances, model-based security analysis is lacking tools that employ effective dashboards---to manage potential attack vectors, system components, and requirements. This problem is further exacerbated because model-based security analysis produces significantly larger result spaces than security analysis applied to realized systems---where platform specific information, software versions, and system element dependencies are known. Therefore, there is a need to manage the analysis complexity in model-based security through better visualization techniques. Towards that goal, we propose an interactive security analysis dashboard that provides different views largely centered around the system, its requirements, and its associated attack vector space. This tool makes it possible to start analysis earlier in the system lifecycle. We apply this tool in a significant area of engineering design---the design of cyber-physical systems---where security violations can lead to safety hazards.

Georgios Bakirtzis, Bryan T. Carter, Cody H. Fleming et al.

Perimeter cybersecurity, while essential, has proven insufficient against sophisticated, coordinated, and cyber-physical attacks. In contrast, mission-centric cybersecurity emphasizes finding evidence of attack impact on mission success, allowing for targeted resource allocation to mitigate vulnerabilities and protect critical assets. Mission Aware is a systems-theoretic cybersecurity analysis that identifies components which, if compromised, destabilize the overall mission. It generates evidence by finding potential attack vectors relevant to mission-linked elements and traces this evidence to mission requirements, prioritizing high-impact vulnerabilities relative to mission objectives. Mission Aware is an informational tool for system resilience by unifying cybersecurity analysis with core systems engineering goals.

Georgios Bakirtzis, Bryan T. Carter, Carl R. Elks et al.

Evaluating the security of cyber-physical systems throughout their life cycle is necessary to assure that they can be deployed and operated in safety-critical applications, such as infrastructure, military, and transportation. Most safety and security decisions that can have major effects on mitigation strategy options after deployment are made early in the system's life cycle. To allow for a vulnerability analysis before deployment, a sufficient well-formed model has to be constructed. To construct such a model we produce a taxonomy of attributes; that is, a generalized schema for system attributes. This schema captures the necessary specificity that characterizes a possible real system and can also map to the attack vector space associated with the model's attributes. In this way, we can match possible attack vectors and provide architectural mitigation at the design phase. We present a model of a flight control system encoded in the Systems Modeling Language, commonly known as SysML, but also show agnosticism with respect to the modeling language or tool used.