Man-in-the-Middle Attack Test-bed Investigating Cyber-security Vulnerabilities in Smart Grid SCADA Systems

The increased complexity and interconnectivity of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in the Smart Grid has exposed them to a wide range of cyber-security issues, and there are a multitude of potential access points for cyber attackers. This paper presents a SCADA-specific cyber-security test-bed which contains SCADA software and communication infrastructure. This test-bed is used to investigate an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) spoofing based man-in-the-middle attack. Finally, the paper proposes a future work plan which focuses on applying intrusion detection and prevention technology to address cyber-security issues in SCADA systems.

Rule-Based Intrusion Detection System for SCADA Networks

Increased complexity and interconnectivity of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in Smart Grids potentially means greater susceptibility to malicious attackers. SCADA systems with legacy communication infrastructure have inherent cyber-security vulnerabilities as these systems were originally designed with little consideration of cyber threats. In order to improve cyber-security of SCADA networks, this paper presents a rule-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS) using a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) method, which includes signature-based and model-based approaches tailored for SCADA systems. The proposed signature-based rules can accurately detect several known suspicious or malicious attacks. In addition, model-based detection is proposed as a complementary method to detect unknown attacks. Finally, proposed intrusion detection approaches for SCADA networks are implemented and verified using a ruled based method.

Intrusion Detection System for IEC 60870-5-104 Based SCADA Networks

Increased complexity and interconnectivity of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in Smart Grids potentially means greater susceptibility to malicious attackers. SCADA systems with legacy communication infrastructure have inherent cyber-security vulnerabilities as these systems were originally designed with little consideration of cyber threats. In order to improve cyber-security of SCADA networks, this paper presents a rule-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS) using a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) method, which includes signature-based and model-based approaches tailored for SCADA systems. The proposed signature-based rules can accurately detect several known suspicious or malicious attacks. In addition, model-based detection is proposed as a complementary method to detect unknown attacks. Finally, proposed intrusion detection approaches for SCADA networks are implemented and verified via Snort rules.

Dense subgraphs on dynamic networks

In distributed networks, it is often useful for the nodes to be aware of dense subgraphs, e.g., such a dense subgraph could reveal dense substructures in otherwise sparse graphs (e.g. the World Wide Web or social networks); these might reveal community clusters or dense regions for possibly maintaining good communication infrastructure. In this work, we address the problem of self-awareness of nodes in a dynamic network with regards to graph density, i.e., we give distributed algorithms for maintaining dense subgraphs that the member nodes are aware of. The only knowledge that the nodes need is that of the dynamic diameter D, i.e., the maximum number of rounds it takes for a message to traverse the dynamic network. For our work, we consider a model where the number of nodes are fixed, but a powerful adversary can add or remove a limited number of edges from the network at each time step. The communication is by broadcast only and follows the CONGEST model. Our algorithms are continuously executed on the network, and at any time (after some initialization) each node will be aware if it is part (or not) of a particular dense subgraph. We give algorithms that (2 + e)-approximate the densest subgraph and (3 + e)-approximate the at-least-k-densest subgraph (for a given parameter k). Our algorithms work for a wide range of parameter values and run in O(D log n) time. Further, a special case of our results also gives the first fully decentralized approximation algorithms for densest and at-least-k-densest subgraph problems for static distributed graphs. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Public Service Broadcasting, Creative Industries and Innovation Infrastructure: The Case of ABC's Pool

The proliferation of media services enabled by digital technologies poses a serious challenge to public service broadcasting rationales based on media scarcity. Looking to the past and future, we articulate an important role that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) might play in the digital age. We argue that historically the ABC has acted beyond its institutional broadcasting remit to facilitate cultural development and, drawing on the example of Pool (an online community of creative practitioners established and maintained by the ABC), point to a key role it might play in fostering network innovation in what are now conceptualised as the creative industries.