SaTC: CORE: Small: Automatic Exploits Detection and Mitigation for Industrial Control System Protocols

工业控制系统（ICS）操作着关键的工业基础设施，如水和电力、石油和天然气、制造和物流以及其他重要行业。这样的系统由一个复杂的交互系统网络组成，这些系统控制着物理世界的关键方面。传统上，这些控制系统被设计用于与外界没有通信的孤立环境。物联网（IoT）的出现在将ICS元素连接到互联网方面发挥了关键作用。然而，它们的控制协议并没有从根本上改变以将安全原则合并到它们的设计中。为了保证ICS协议在Internet上的安全可靠运行，需要对其进行全面的安全分析。更广泛的影响包括与工业界建立伙伴关系，扩大来自代表性不足背景的学生的研究参与。本项目旨在探索对ICS系统协议进行安全分析的可行路径。这是一个挑战，因为ICS系统实现了封闭和开源协议的混合，并且记录这些协议的所有执行路径是不可行的。该项目利用模型推理技术来深入了解ICS协议的工作原理。关键技术是记录ICS协议的有限状态机（fsm），从而推断其实现模型。然后使用推断的模型来识别协议的状态及其转换，然后根据安全属性进行验证以进行分析。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Industrial control systems (ICS) operates critical industrial infrastructure such as water and power, oil and gas, manufacturing and logistics, and other essential industries. Such systems consists of a complex network of interactive systems that control the critical aspects of the physical world. Traditionally, these control systems have been designed for isolated environments with no communication with the outside world. The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) has played a key role in connecting ICS elements to the Internet. Their governing protocols, however, have not fundamentally changed to incorporate security principles into their design. There is a need for performing comprehensive security analyses on ICS protocols for their safe and secure operations over the Internet. The broader impacts include partnerships with industry, and broadening the research participation of students from underrepresented backgrounds.This project aims to explore a viable path to conduct a security analysis on ICS system protocols. This is challenging as ICS systems implement a mix of closed and open-source protocols and logging all execution paths of these protocols is not feasible. The project leverages model inference techniques to gain insights into the working of ICS protocols. The key technique is to record the Finite State Machines (FSMs) of ICS protocols to infer their implementation models. The inferred model is then used to identify the protocols’ states and their transitions which are then validated against the security properties for analysis.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.