Building availability assurance in safety-critical cyberphysical systems

In May 2021, the Colonial Pipeline, which transports nearly half of fuel consumed on the East Coast, experienced a cyberattack that affected its operations for several days, making it the largest cyberattack of its kind in the U.S. For safety-critical, real-time cyberphysical systems, from critical energy infrastructure that provides the daily necessity to pacemaker implants that save lives, staying correct and responsive in the presence of cyberattacks is essential.

Ning Zhang, assistant professor of computer science & engineering and an expert in cyberphysical system security, plans to address threats to the availability of these systems with a five-year, nearly $521,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. The NSF CAREER awards support junior faculty who model the role of teacher-scholar through outstanding research, excellence in education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organization. One-third of current McKelvey Engineering faculty have received the award. 

Zhang will address threats to availability in different layers of the system stack, from the underlying operating system to the safety-critical and nonsafety-critical processes. He will look at three key areas: generalized system availability assurance on heterogeneous hardware platform; software availability through information flow analysis and selective recovery; and performance interference and isolation. 

“For many cyberphysical systems, a delayed response in the cyber world can lead to catastrophic failures in the physical world,” Zhang said. “If you don’t get access to a computer document for 5 seconds, it’s not a problem, but if you don’t get access to a self-driving car or a surgical robot for 5 seconds, bad things can happen. Therefore, it is important that the security system also protects availability.” 

To build that type of system, Zhang said he and his team will look at the system from an attacker’s perspective.

“Based on the adversary’s capability in the three layers of abstractions, we’ll analyze the unique vectors on the attack surface — how many different weaknesses an attacker can take advantage of,” he said. “Building on top of the security analysis of the attacker, we will then develop the new theory and system to thwart the attacks.”

In addition to health care, self-driving cars and energy production, among others, Zhang said this research becomes more important as these cyberphysical systems become pervasive in our society.

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