Cryptographic Methods for Securing Cyber-Physical Systems

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Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are smart co-engineered interacting networks of physical and computational components. CPS range from small (IoT) devices such as implantable medical devices to large scale systems such as smart grids, industrial control systems, and smart buildings and cities. While CPS provide richer functionality, efficiency, and reliability compared to loosely coupled systems, they also create inherent security and privacy vulnerabilities. Ensuring the security of current and emerging CPS must take into consideration the unique challenges present in this environment such as the non-reversible nature of the interactions of CPS with the physical world, strict real-time availability requirements, absence of the human in the loop, the scale of deployment, and the long projected lifetimes of CPS components. In order to tackle the security and privacy issues in CPS, in the coming years, cryptography will increasingly become more integral to CPS; all interacting networked computers and devices need to have cryptographic layers implemented in order to provide key security features. On the other hand, traditional cryptographic mechanisms are inadequate, and fundamentally new ideas are needed. This research program aims to investigate innovative cryptographic techniques that can be used to enhance the security of CPS for decades to come. Our long term objective is to develop provably-secure cryptographic algorithms and security protocols for CPS taking into consideration the unique challenges present in CPS environments. The developed algorithms and protocols should be ready for analysis, standardization, and deployment by security practitioners and engineers in relevant CPS/IoT industries. In the short term, we aim to (i) Develop key management and multicast authentication schemes suitable for CPS, (ii) Develop lightweight and post-quantum algorithms suitable for CPS deployment, (iii) Investigate multidisciplinary approaches to improve CPS resiliency to cyber attack. The developed techniques should allow, not only to defend and detect cyber attacks, but also to remediate and recover from these attacks and ensure the continuous operation of the underlying CPS, and (iv) Provide open source hardware/software implementations for some of the security mechanisms developed throughout this project to prototype and build secure CPS and IoT applications. The research outcomes of our proposed program will enhance the CPS/IoT security community state-of-the-art and knowledge. Success in developing an efficient and provably secure cryptographic schemes would be significant in supporting a large number of valuable CPS applications and industries. Furthermore, the training provided to our graduate students and researchers throughout this program will also satisfy the urgent need for gender-balanced and diverse pool of highly qualified Canadian experts in CPS/IoT security, which has never been as vital as it is nowadays.