Felix Sauer

Behzad Azmi, Stefan Frei, Felix Sauer

This paper investigates the local exponential stabilization of the two-dimensional Navier--Stokes equations to a given reference trajectory by means of receding horizon control (RHC). The control is realized as a linear combination of finitely many actuators, represented by indicator functions supported on subsets of a prescribed control subdomain. We establish local exponential stabilizability and suboptimality for the resulting RHC scheme. Numerical experiments for two flow configurations of increasing complexity illustrate the theoretical findings and assess the practical performance of the method. In addition, we propose a model-order-reduced RHC approach based on proper orthogonal decomposition, which significantly reduces the computational cost while maintaining favorable closed-loop stabilization performance in the numerical experiments.

Felix Sauer, Matthias Niedermaier, Susanne Kießling et al.

Unnoticed by most people, Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) control entire productions and critical infrastructures such as water distribution, smart grid and automotive manufacturing. Due to the ongoing digitalization, these systems are becoming more and more connected in order to enable remote control and monitoring. However, this shift bears significant risks, namely a larger attack surface, which can be exploited by attackers. In order to make these systems more secure, it takes research, which is, however, difficult to conduct on productive systems, since these often have to operate twenty-four-seven. Testbeds are mostly very expensive or based on simulation with no real-world physical process. In this paper, we introduce LICSTER, an open-source low-cost ICS testbed, which enables researchers and students to get hands-on experience with industrial security for about 500 Euro. We provide all necessary material to quickly start ICS hacking, with the focus on low-cost and open-source for education and research.

Matthias Niedermaier, Martin Striegel, Felix Sauer et al.

Communication between sensors, actors and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) in industrial systems moves from two-wire field buses to IP-based protocols such as Modbus/TCP. This increases the attack surface because the IP-based network is often reachable from everywhere within the company. Thus, centralized defenses, e.g. at the perimeter of the network do not offer sufficient protection. Rather, decentralized defenses, where each part of the network protects itself, are needed. Network Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) monitor the network and report suspicious activity. They usually run on a single host and are not able to capture all events in the network and they are associated with a great integration effort. To bridge this gap, we introduce a method for intrusion detection that combines distributed agents on Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) edge devices with a centralized logging. In contrast to existing IDSs, the distributed approach is suitable for industrial low performance microcontrollers. We demonstrate a Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation on a MCU running FreeRTOS with LwIP and show the feasibility of our approach in an IIoT application.