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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Controls and Control Theory

Air Force Institute of Technology

Theses and Dissertations

2018

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Variable Speed Simulation For Accelerated Industrial Control System Cyber Training, Luke M. Bradford Mar 2018

Variable Speed Simulation For Accelerated Industrial Control System Cyber Training, Luke M. Bradford

Theses and Dissertations

It is important for industrial control system operators to receive quality training to defend against cyber attacks. Hands-on training exercises with real-world control systems allow operators to learn various defensive techniques and see the real-world impact of changes made to a control system. Cyber attacks and operator actions can have unforeseen effects that take a significant amount of time to manifest and potentially cause physical harm to the system, making high-fidelity training exercises time-consuming and costly. This thesis presents a method for accelerating training exercises by simulating and predicting the effects of a cyber event on a partially-simulated control system. …


Securing Critical Infrastructure: A Ransomware Study, Blaine M. Jeffries Mar 2018

Securing Critical Infrastructure: A Ransomware Study, Blaine M. Jeffries

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reviews traditional ransomware attack trends in order to present a taxonomy for ransomware targeting industrial control systems. After reviewing a critical infrastructure ransomware attack methodology, a corresponding response and recovery plan is described. The plan emphasizes security through redundancy, specifically the incorporation of standby programmable logic controllers. This thesis goes on to describe a set of experiments conducted to test the viability of defending against a specialized ransomware attack with a redundant controller network. Results support that specific redundancy schemes are effective in recovering from a successful attack. Further experimentation is conducted to test the feasibility of industrial …