Security Hardened Remote Terminal Units for SCADA Networks
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2008 Security hardened remote terminal units for SCADA networks. Jeff Hieb University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Hieb, Jeff, "Security hardened remote terminal units for SCADA networks." (2008). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 615. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/615 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SECURITY HARDENED REMOTE TERMINAL UNITS FOR SCADA NETWORKS By Jeffrey Lloyd Hieb B.S., Furman University, 1992 B.A., Furman University, 1992 M.S., University of Louisville, 2004 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering J. B. Speed School of Engineering University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2008 SECURITY HARDENED REMOTE TERMINAL UNITS FOR SCADA NETWORKS By Jeffrey Lloyd Hieb B.S., Furman University, 1992 B.A., Furman University, 1992 M.S., University of Louisville, 2004 A Dissertation Approved on February 26, 2008 By the following Dissertation Committee members Dr. James H. Graham, Dissertation Director Dr. Adel Elmaghraby Dr. Patricia A. S. Ralston Dr. Dar-jen Chang Dr. Rammohan K. Ragade ii DEDICATION To my wife Jennifer for all of her support, encouragement and patience. 111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep appreciation to Dr. James Graham, my dissertation director. Collaborating and working with him has been both pleasurable and educational. His technical guidance, perspective and encouragement were essential to the completion of this dissertation. I wish to thank the members of my committee, Dr. Patricia Ralston, Dr. Adel Elmaghraby, Dr. Dar-jen Chang, and Dr. Rammohan K. Ragade for their time, expertise, and support. A special thanks to Dr. Adel Elmaghraby for mentoring me in the future faculty program. I learned a lot from our conversations. I also owe special thanks to my friends and colleagues Sandy Patel, Rob Kelley, Doug Wampler, and Nathan Johnson for distracting me when I need distracting and assuring me when I need assuring. Many thanks to Dr. Walden Laukhuf, Mr. Steve Williamson, and the Chemical Engineering Department. Generous use of their facilities, particularly the Process Control Laboratory and the Unit Operations Laboratory, as well as their time and expertise were greatly appreciated. Thanks also to Ron Lile and his staff for providing technical support. IV ABSTRACT SECURITY HARDENED REMOTE TERMINAL UNITS FOR SCADA NETWORKS Jeffrey L. Hieb February 26, 2008 Remote terminal units (RTUs) are perimeter supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices that measure and control actual physical devices. Cyber security was largely ignored in SCADA for many years, and the cyber security issues that now face SCADA and DCS, specifically RTU security, are investigated in this research. This dissertation presents a new role based access control model designed specifically for RTUs and process control. The model is developed around the process control specific data element called a point, and point operations. The model includes: assignment constraints that limit the RTU operations that a specific role can be assigned and activation constraints that allow a security administrator to specify conditions when specific RTU roles or RTU permissions cannot be used. RTU enforcement of the new access control model depends on, and is supported by, the protection provided by an RTU's operating system. This dissertation investigates two approaches for using minimal kernels to reduce potential vulnerabilities in RTU protection enforcement and create a security hardened R TU capable of supporting the new RTU access control model. The first approach is to reduce a commercial OS kernel v to only those components needed by the RTU, removing any known or unknown vulnerabilities contained in the eliminated code and significantly reducing the size of the kernel. The second approach proposes using a microkernel that supports partitioning as the basis for an RTU specific operating system which isolates network related RTU software, the R TU attack surface, from critical R TU operational software such as control algorithms and analog and digital input and output. In experimental analysis of a prototype hardened RTU connected to real SCADA hardware, a reduction of over 50% was obtained in reducing a 2.4 Linux kernel to run on actual RTU hardware. Functional testing demonstrated that different users were able to carryout assigned tasks with the limited set of permissions provided by the security hardened RTU and a series of simulated insider attacks were prevented by the RTU role based access control system. Analysis of communication times indicated response times would be acceptable for many SCADA and DCS application areas. Investigation of a partitioning microkernel for an RTU identified the L4 microkernel as an excellent candidate. Experimental evaluation of L4 on real hardware found the IPC overhead for simulated critical RTU operations protected by L4 partitioning to be sufficiently small to warrant continued investigation of the approach. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ v LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ xii LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... xiv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 1.1 Organization of Dissertation ............................................................................... 5 CHAPTER II LITERATURE SURVERY ........................................................................ 7 2.1 SCADA systems ................................................................................................. 7 2.1.1 SCADA Components ...................................................................................... 8 2.1.2 SCADA architectures .................................................................................... 12 2.1.3 SCADA protocols ......................................................................................... 15 2.2 SCADA cyber security threats and vulnerabilities ........................................... 16 2.3 Securing SCADA systems ................................................................................ 23 2.3.1 Securing SCADA with standard IT technologies ......................................... 23 2.3.2 Differences between SCADA and Traditional IT environment ................... 28 2.3.3 SCADA research challenges and current research ....................................... 29 2.4 The Role based access control model ............................................................... 36 2.4.1 RBAC constraints ......................................................................................... 38 2.4.2 Specifying constraints on RBAC models ................................................. 42 2.5 Operating system security, reliability and reduced kernels .............................. 52 VII 2.5.1 Minimal kernels ............................................................................................ 56 2.5.2 Separation kernel and the MILS architecture ............................................... 58 CHAPTER III SECURITY HARDENING RTUS .......................................................... 61 3.1 RTU security vulnerabilities ............................................................................. 62 3.2 A security hardened R TU ................................................................................. 66 3.2.1 Secure SCADA protocol ............................................................................... 66 3.2.2 RTU role based access controL ................................................................... 68 3.2.3 Reduced kernel OS ....................................................................................... 71 3.3 A security hardened RTU architecture ............................................................. 73 3.4 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER IV RTU ACCESS CONTROL MODEL ...................................................... 76 4.1 Core elements of the RTU access control modeL ............................................ 76 4.1.1 Sets ................................................................................................................ 77 4.1.2 Relations ....................................................................................................... 80 4.1.3 Core model definition ..................................................................................