Vulnerability analysis of PLC-based SCADA systems over ethernet using attack trees and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) tools

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are a part of the automation systems in industry and they also help to control critical infrastructures. These systems have evolved from proprietary, stand-alone devices to Internet and TCP/IP-based platforms. The migration to a common platform, such as TCP/IP, brings its own share of problems, besides the threat from attackers on the Internet. Such standards, where security has typically been a low priority, present a high level of threat when these systems control business-critical or safety-critical operations. In these systems, security methods and protection techniques should be designed beforehand. This thesis analyzes and considers various weak links in SCADA and Programmabale Logic Controller (PLC)-based systems on Ethernet through a systematic approach using attack trees and designing a risk matrix --Abstract, page iii