Evaluation of Secure Peer-to-Peer Overlay Routing for Survivable SCADA Systems
Jeffrey J. Farris, David M. Nicol · 2004
Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems gather and analyze data for real-time control. SCADA systems are used extensively, in applications such as electrical power distribution, telecommunica-tions, and energy refining. SCADA systems are obvious targets for cyber-attacks that would seek to disrupt the physical complexities governed by a SCADA system. This paper uses a discrete-event simulation to begin to investigate the characteristics of one potential means of hardening SCADA systems against a cyber-attack. When it appears that real-time message delivery con-straints are not being met (due, for example, to a de-nial of service attack), a peer-to-peer overlay network is used to route message floods in an effort to ensure de-livery. The SCADA system, and peer-to-peer nodes all use strong hardware-based authentication techniques to prevent injection of false data or commands, and to harden the routing overlay. Our simulations help to quantify the anticipated tradeoffs of message surviv-ability and latency minimization. 1