CPS

Cyber-Physical Systems

Study on smart-troubleshooting accepted for publication on top Elsevier journal

2019-09-08

The paper entitled “Smart-Troubleshooting Connected Devices: Concept, Challenges and Opportunities” (Mauro Caporuscio, Francesco Flammini, Narges Khakpour, Prasannjeet Singh, Johan Thornadtsson) has been accepted for publication on Future Generation Computer Systems (Elsevier, Impact Factor: 5.768). The paper includes the results achieved during the SEED project entitled Smart-Troubleshooting in the Connected Society in cooperation with Sigma Technology, and addresses several challenges towards self-healing for resilient IoT.

 

Abstract

Today’s digital world and evolving technology has improved the quality of our lives but it has also come with a number of new threats. In the society of smart-cities and Industry 4.0, where many cyber-physical devices connect and exchange data through the Internet of Things, the need for addressing information security and solve system failures becomes inevitable. System failures can occur because of hardware failures, software bugs or interoperability issues. In this paper we introduce the industry-originated concept of “smart-troubleshooting” that is the set of activities and tools needed to gather failure information generated by heterogeneous connected devices, analyze them, and match them with troubleshooting instructions and software fixes. As a consequence of implementing smart-troubleshooting, the system would be able to self-heal and thus become more resilient. This paper aims to survey frameworks, methodologies and tools related to this new concept, and especially the ones needed to model, analyze and recover from failures in a (semi)automatic way. Smart-troubleshooting has a relation with event analysis to perform diagnostics and prognostics on devices manufactured by different suppliers in a distributed system. It also addresses management of appropriate product information specified in possibly unstructured formats to guide the troubleshooting workflow in identifying fault-causes and solutions. Relevant research is briefly surveyed in the paper in order to highlight current state-of-the-art, open issues, challenges to be tackled and future opportunities in this emerging industry paradigm.

Digital Object Identifier:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2019.09.004

Research on intelligent cybersecurity at IEEE SMC 2019

2019-07-29

The paper entitled “A Review of Intelligent Cybersecurity with Bayesian Networks” (Mauro Pappaterra, Francesco Flammini) has been accepted for conference presentation and publication in the proceedings of the 2019 IEEE SMC international conference, i.e. the flagship event of the  IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics society, special session on Homeland Security: Tools and Methodologies.

The paper will be presented by master student Mauro Pappaterra, who has been granted registration costs and travel expenses by the Department of Computer Science and Media Technology.

 

Abstract

Cybersecurity threats have surged in the past decades. Experts agree that conventional security measures will soon not be enough to stop the propagation of more sophisticated and harmful cyberattacks. Recently, there has been a growing interest in mastering the complexity of cybersecurity by adopting methods borrowed from Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to support automation. In this paper, we provide a brief survey and some hints about Bayesian Network applications to intelligent cybersecurity in order to enable quantitative threat assessment for superior risk analysis and situation awareness.

See also:

https://lnu.se/en/meet-linnaeus-university/current/news/2019/research-on-intelligent-cyber-security-to-be-presented-at-ieee-conference/

 

UPDATE, August 20th 2019

Mauro has also been selected as “Student or Young Professional Travel Grant Winner” for the SMC 2019 conference.

 

UPDATE, October 7th 2019

A picture of Mauro’s presentation:

 

UPDATE, December 2nd 2019

The paper is finally available from IEEE Digital Library at the following link:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8913864

Plain text citation:

M. J. Pappaterra and F. Flammini, “A Review of Intelligent Cybersecurity with Bayesian Networks,” 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC), Bari, Italy, 2019, pp. 445-452.
doi: 10.1109/SMC.2019.8913864
URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8913864&isnumber=8913838

Pioneering research on Virtual Coupling published on top IEEE journal

2019-07-24

The paper entitled “ERTMS/ETCS Virtual Coupling: Proof of Concept and Numerical Analysis”, describing a pioneering research developed in cooperation between LNU and the University of Naples Federico II, has been accepted for publication on the top journal about smart-transportation, i.e. “IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems”.

The paper can be accessed online from the following link:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8737771

 

Abstract:

Railway infrastructure operators need to push their network capacity up to their limits in high-traffic corridors. Virtual coupling is considered among the most relevant innovations to be studied within the European Horizon 2020 Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking as it can drastically reduce headways and thus increase the line capacity by allowing to dynamically connect two or more trains in a single convoy. This paper provides a proof of concept of Virtual coupling by introducing a specific operating mode within the European rail traffic management system/European train control system (ERTMS/ETCS) standard specification, and by defining a coupling control algorithm accounting for time-varying delays affecting the communication links. To that aim, we define one ploy to enrich the ERTMS/ETCS with Virtual coupling without changing its working principles and we borrow a numerical analysis methodology used to study platooning in the automotive field. The numerical analysis is also provided to support the proof of concept with quantitative results in a case-study simulation scenario.

Talk: Towards Secure Architectural Adaptation at SEAMS 2019

2019-05-26

A few of our researchers are now in Montreal, Canada for SEAMS 2019 (Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems 2019 conference). The objective of SEAMS is to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse areas to investigate, discuss, and examine the fundamental principles, the state of the art, and critical challenges of engineering self-adaptive and self-managing systems.

On Sunday May 26th, Narges Khakpour will give a presentation of the paper entitled Towards Secure Architectural Adaptation (authored by: Narges Khakpour, Charilaos Skandylas, Goran Saman Nariman, and Danny Weyns), accepted for publication in the book of proceedings of the conference.

As any software system, a self-adaptive system is subject to security threats. However, applying self-adaptation may introduce additional threats. So far, little research has been devoted to this important problem. In this paper, we propose an approach for vulnerability analysis of architecture-based adaptations in self-adaptive systems using threat modeling and analysis techniques. To this end, we specify components’ vulnerabilities and the system architecture formally and generate an attack model that describes the attacker’s strategies to attack the system when adaptation is applied by exploiting different vulnerabilities. We use a set of security metrics to quantitatively assess the security risks of adaptations based on the produced attack model which enables the system to consider security aspects while choosing an adaptation to apply to the system. We automate and incorporate our approach into the Rainbow framework, allowing for secure architectural adaptations at runtime. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we apply it on a simple document storage system and on the ZNN system.

For more information please click here.