Sandro Gaycken

Assessing Cyberattacks Against Wireless Networks of the Next Global Internet of Things Revolution: Industry 4.0

Historically, technology advances and increase in productivity led to revolutionary societal changes and industrial development. The first industrial revolution created machines to replace hand work and invented steam engine to decrease hard labor. The ambitious engineer thought catalyzed the second industrial revolution, electrification increased the working hours and assembly lines enhanced mass production in the beginning of the twentieth century. While its second part witnessed a real breakthrough in computer engineering, and industrial automation spread exponentially taking over the manual controls; cyberspace ensured global digital communication, mobile connection, and e-commerce. Electronics and internet technologies created the thirst industrial revolution. The beginning of the XXI century is operating with such realities as Internet of Things, Robotics, Virtual Reality, Cyber Warfare, and Industry 4.0.

Preface: So Far, so Bad – the Complexity-Fear Dilemma in Cybersecurity and Its Lesson for Digitalization at Large

The new waves of the ongoing digital revolution are certainly of high importance to everyone. New markets are created in a highly dynamic fashion, with the industrialized West and its backbone of technology manufacturers undergoing fundamental changes in the coming years, and new products flood our lives, whether directly as consumer goods or, a step before that, as baseline technologies, infrastructures, production machinery, new cars, new drug pumps, new reactors, parts of our formerly dumb and blind environment of “old tech”. In sum, businesses and technologies in Germany and Europe are faced with enormous options for change – and their according sets of opportunities and threats.

Governance and Management Frameworks

Wireless networks are governed by a variety of regulations that are intended to cover safe operation of emergency communications and medical devices.

Security Technologies for Networked Devices

To protect against “man-in-the-middle” attacks, wherein a hacker eavesdrops on messages between two or more nodes and relays or modifies messages so that the legitimate nodes are deceived into thinking they are talking directly to one another. To protect from such attacks, a successful information assurance strategy must make the mere reception of a signal useless to a would-be hacker.

Testing the Resilience of HCWN

The wireless technologies, since their birth in 1890, have revolutionized our life style and provided freedom and liberty in remote data procession and management, both in civilian and military areas. After more than a century of evolution, wireless technology is adopted globally due to its advantages and ease of use in communication and data transfer, and wireless interconnectivity surrounds us on a daily basis, from wireless CCTV cameras to smartphones.

Competent Reliable Operation of HCWN

Telemetry is the automatic transmission and measurement of data from remote sources by wire or radio or other means. It is also used to send commands, programs and receives monitoring information from these terminal locations. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems use a combination of telemetry and data acquisition. SCADA is used for collecting information, transferring it to a central management site, carrying out any necessary data analysis and control operations, and then displaying the status information back onto the operator screens.

Modeling Threats and Risks

Scanning of critical infrastructure networks is done for intelligence gathering for industrial espionage or for making preparations to direct a future cyberattack. Trend Micro officials reportedly have stated that, “We have observed increased interest in [scanning of] SCADA protocols …” for critical infrastructure and industrial systems.

Known Weaknesses with Security Controls

Richard Clarke, former White House advisor on cybersecurity, has reportedly warned that there is evidence that China has been actively probing and hacking wireless networks that control the United States power grid. Clarke points out, “The only point to penetrating the grid’s controls is to counter American military superiority by threatening to damage the underpinning of the U.S. economy. Chinese military strategists have written about how in this way a nation like China could gain an equal footing with the militarily superior United States”.

Applications for HCWN

HCWNs are regularly used by first responders and the military to support communications in remote areas; they may also be used to control portable medical devices; they may connect remote locations with SCADA systems to power generators and other centrally located critical civilian infrastructures and facilities; or, they may be the communications system that controls and monitors household devices as they are part of the new Smart Electric Grid for power distribution.

Vulnerabilities and Security Issues

HCWN networks provide flexibility for using mobile devices, and can be designed to increase reliability of communications in remote areas. However, the interdependencies and complexities of wireless systems in all industries are subject to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. These interdependencies are part of the designs that permit increased speeds and conveniences to help staff work faster and with more accuracy.