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Security is the main challenge of the Modbus IIoT protocol. The systems designed to provide security involve solutions that manage identity based on a centralized approach by introducing a single point of failure and with an ad hoc model for an organization, which handicaps the solution scalability. Our manuscript proposes a solution based on self-sovereign identity over hyperledger fabric blockchain, promoting a decentralized identity from which both authentication and authorization are performed on-chain. The implementation of the system promotes not only Modbus security, but also aims to ensure the simplicity, compatibility and interoperability claimed by Modbus.

It is necessary to verify the faults tolerance of the European Train Control System (ETCS) on-board unit even if these faults are uncommon. Traditional test methods defined and used in ETCS do not allow to check this, so it is necessary to develop a new mechanism of tests. This paper presents the design and implementation of a saboteur applied to the railway sector. The main purpose of the saboteur is the fault injection in the communication interfaces. By means of a virtual laboratory it is possible to simulate actual train journeys to test the ETCS on-board unit. Making use of the saboteurs and the virtual laboratory it is possible to analyse the behaviour of the train in the presence of unexpected faults, and to verify that the decisions taken are correct to ensure the required safety level. Therefore, this work shows a testing strategy based on different kinds of train journeys when faults are injected, and the analysis of the results.

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Supervisory Control systems and Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks implement industrial communication protocols to enable their operations. Modbus is an application protocol that allows communication between millions of automation devices. Unfortunately, Modbus lacks basic security mechanisms, and this leads to multiple vulnerabilities, due to both design and implementation. This issue enables certain types of attacks, for example, man in the middle attacks, eavesdropping attacks, and replay attack. The exploitation of such flaws may greatly influence companies and the general population, especially for attacks targeting critical infrastructural assets, such as power plants, water distribution and railway transportation systems. In order to provide security mechanisms to the protocol, the Modbus organization released security specifications, which provide robust protection through the blending of Transport Layer Security (TLS) with the traditional Modbus protocol. TLS will encapsulate Modbus packets to provide both authentication and message-integrity protection. The security features leverage X.509v3 digital certificates for authentication of the server and client. From the security specifications, this study addresses the security problems of the Modbus protocol, proposing a new secure version of a role-based access control model (RBAC), in order to authorize both the client on the server, as well as the Modbus frame. This model is divided into an authorization process via roles, which is inserted as an arbitrary extension in the certificate X.509v3 and the message authorization via unit id, a unique identifier used to authorize the Modbus frame. Our proposal is evaluated through two approaches: A security analysis and a performance analysis. The security analysis involves verifying the protocol’s resistance to different types of attacks, as well as that certain pillars of cybersecurity, such as integrity and confidentiality, are not compromised. Finally, our performance analysis involves deploying our design over a testnet built on GNS3. This testnet has been designed based on an industrial security standard, such as IEC-62443, which divides the industrial network into levels. Then both the client and the server are deployed over this network in order to verify the feasibility of the proposal. For this purpose, different latencies measurements in industrial environments are used as a benchmark, which are matched against the latencies in our proposal for different cipher suites.

The growing adoption of Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) systems, particularly in the healthcare field, demonstrates that RFID is a positive asset for healthcare institutions. RFID offers the ability to save organizations time and costs by enabling data of traceability, identification, communication, temperature and location in real time for both people and resources. However, the RFID systems challenges are financial, technical, organizational and above all privacy and security. For this reason, recent works focus on attribute-based access control (ABAC) schemes. Currently, ABAC are based on mostly centralized models, which in environments such as the supply chain can present problems of scalability, synchronization and trust between the parties. In this manuscript, we implement an ABAC model in RFID systems based on a decentralized model such as blockchain. Common criteria for the selection of the appropriate blockchain are detailed. Our access control policies are executed through the decentralized application (DApp), which interfaces with the blockchain through the smart contract. Smart contracts and blockchain technology, on the one hand, solve current centralized systems issues as well as being flexible infrastructures that represent the relationship of trust and support essential in the ABAC model in order to provide the security of RFID systems. Our system has been designed for a supply chain environment with an use case suitable for healthcare systems, so that assets such as surgical instruments containing an associated RFID tag can only access to specific areas. Our system is deployed in both a local and Testnet environment in order to stablish a deep comparison and determining the technical feasibility.

The Internet of Things (IoT) provides the ability to digitize physical objects into virtual data, thanks to the integration of hardware (e.g., sensors, actuators) and network communications for collecting and exchanging data. In this digitization process, however, security challenges need to be taken into account in order to prevent information availability, integrity, and confidentiality from being compromised. In this paper, security challenges of two broadly used technologies, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and Bluetooth, are analyzed. First, a review of the main vulnerabilities, security risk, and threats affecting both technologies are carried out. Then, open hardware and open source tools like: Proxmark3 and Ubertooth as well as BtleJuice and Bleah are used as part of the practical analysis. Lastly, risk mitigation and counter measures are proposed.

Communication technologies are in continuous evolution and as well, the different applications making use of them. In order to succeed with the roll-out of the communication-based applications, it is required that the communications technologies are intensively tested and validated before deployment. Current strategies for testing and validation cover field tests and laboratory tests. Railways is also taking advantage of the communication technologies evolution, and therefore, there is a need for having testing and validation strategies adapted to the railway environment, especially for safety-critical applications. Field tests and laboratory tests also apply in Railways. In the frame of laboratory tests, this paper includes an overview of different network emulators existing currently in the market. Furthermore, an analysis of the gaps of the network emulators with regards to the needs of the railways environment is also included. The goal of this paper is to show that network emulators are a flexible cost-effective solution for communication technologies testing purposes. Additionally, this paper also shows that there is a need to adapt current emulators to the railway environment in order to test and validate the future railway applications based on communication technologies.