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Security of controlled manufacturing systems in the connected factory: the case of industrial robots

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Abstract

In modern factories, “controlled” manufacturing systems, such as industrial robots, CNC machines, or 3D printers, are often connected in a control network, together with a plethora of heterogeneous control devices. Despite the obvious advantages in terms of production and ease of maintenance, this trend raises non-trivial cybersecurity concerns. Often, the devices employed are not designed for an interconnected world, but cannot be promptly replaced: In fact, they have essentially become legacy systems, embodying design patterns where components and networks are accounted as trusted elements. In this paper, we take a holistic view of the security issues (and challenges) that arise in designing and securely deploying controlled manufacturing systems, using industrial robots as a case study—indeed, robots are the most representative instance of a complex automatically controlled industrial device. Following up to our previous experimental analysis, we take a broad look at the deployment of industrial robots in a typical factory network and at the security challenges that arise from the interaction between operators and machines; then, we propose actionable points to secure industrial cyber-physical systems, and we discuss the limitations of the current standards in industrial robotics to account for active attackers.

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Notes

  1. https://www.universal-robots.com/plus/.

  2. ISO 10218-1:2001 and ISO 13849-1:2008 for “caged” robots, and ISO/TS 15066:2016 for collaborative ones.

  3. https://ics-radar.shodan.io/.

  4. http://rosindustrial.org.

  5. https://github.com/robotics/open_abb.

  6. https://felix.apache.org/documentation/subprojects/apache-felix-remote-shell.html.

  7. SHA256 hash: 78d9b449e64b4b2bb40ad30b2033420599b5923 af5ae1c00b7eb5f4447acc772.

  8. http://tools.alumotion.eu/it/youring/.

  9. http://www.robotappstore.com/.

  10. https://robotapps.robotstudio.com.

  11. https://www.universal-robots.com/plus.

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Acknowledgements

Politecnico di Milano received funding for this project from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement nr. 690972, and has been partially supported by CINI Cybersecurity National Laboratory within the project FilieraSicura: Securing the Supply Chain of Domestic Critical Infrastructures from Cyber Attacks (www.filierasicura.it), funded by CISCO Systems Inc. and Leonardo SpA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Marcello Pogliani, Davide Quarta, Mario Polino, Martino Vittone & Stefano Zanero

  2. EURECOM, Biot, France

    Davide Quarta

  3. Trend Micro Inc., Milan, Italy

    Federico Maggi

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  1. Marcello Pogliani
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  2. Davide Quarta
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  3. Mario Polino
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  4. Martino Vittone
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  6. Stefano Zanero
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Correspondence to Marcello Pogliani.

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Pogliani, M., Quarta, D., Polino, M. et al. Security of controlled manufacturing systems in the connected factory: the case of industrial robots. J Comput Virol Hack Tech 15, 161–175 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11416-019-00329-8

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