investigating cyber threats in a nuclear power plant

Challenges regarding subterranean disposal have already been solved. A brief review of the current state of experimental testbeds used in ICS cybersecurity research and a comparison of the structures of various testbeds and the attack scenarios supported by those testbeds is included. Generally, breaches have been limited to IT networks that do not affect critical safety and security systems (with a notable exception beingStuxnet, the infamous, advanced computer worm widely believed to have been developed by the US and Israel to strike a uranium enrichment facility in Iran in 2009more on this in a moment.) In particular, there must be separation between a nuclear TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace. Cyberterrorism is a legitimate threat, and as the cyber battleground grows exponentially, it is only a matter of time before malware is coded with the capability of creating another Chernobyl. Given what is now publicly known, one could predict that earthquake sensors, required in all reactors, would trigger automatic shutdown to protect the core. 699 KB PDF. Based on science, what should Americans worry about? His research interests are in areas of data and application security, network security, security modeling, risk management, trust models, privacy and digital forensics. To block attacks like these, Capdevielle said, companies need to leverage advanced intrusion detection and prevention systems to identify and shut down anomalous behavior before any damage can be done. This project integrates expertise across the College of Engineering to link cybersecurity threat models with state-of-the-art simulation tools. In recent years, cyberattacks involving malicious software such as the Stuxnet worm thought to have crippled Iranian nuclear facilities in 2009 have demonstrated the ability to target industrial control systems, even where facilities are protected by multiple layers of security and are on an isolated network. Any cyberattack on the Nuclear Power Plant Control System is not possible. WebA story has been making the rounds on the Internet since yesterday about a cyber attack on an Indian nuclear power plant. After a decade of delays and lawsuits by environmentalists, the WIPP opened in 1999. An attempt to melt down the core would activate multiple safeguards, including alternate means of providing coolant as well as withdrawal of the fuel rods from the chain reaction process. After September 11, communities and politicians expressed indignation that this inexpensive drug had not been stockpiled. 2023 TechnologyAdvice. degree in electrical engineering from the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) in 2016. Deloittes report on Managing cyber-risk in the electric power sector, Emerging threats to supply chain and industrial control systems discusses cyberattacks that demonstrate a threat to the power sector through supply chains. Still, Nozomi Networks CEO Edgard Capdevielle said that kind of air-gapping can no longer be counted on to offer any real protection. She became an Assistant Professor, and later an Associate Professor in the Reliability Engineering Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Rakibul Talukder: Mr. Rakibul Talukder is a graduate student in the Computer Science Department at Colorado State University. Rios, a security researcher, decided one day in 2013 to probe the Itemiser 3, which TSA had tested in the lab but never deployed. The materials are neither refined nor concentrated enough to start a chain reaction. Parkhouse, the top cybersecurity official at British regulator the Office for Nuclear Regulation, said he came across an organization working in the nuclear sector that ties employee bonuses to having a clean sheet for reporting cyber vulnerabilities. He also received the M.E. Yeongjin Jang, assistant professor of computer science, focuses on computer systems security, especially for identifying and analyzing emerging attacks. His research interests are broadly in dynamic decision-making of multi-agent systems, mechanism design, artificial intelligence, security, and resilience of cyber-physical systems. Last winters shoe bomber tried to detonate not a nuclear device but rather a relatively available, very dangerous chemical compound concealed in his shoes. The salt, plastic at that depth, and impermeable to radionuclides, eventually encloses the drums, providing another natural barrier. We can test the security of someones environment and we can test the security of someones devices in these environments. After stints at Princeton University, he is currently an associate professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, New York University (NYU). To ensure the CS protection of these infrastructures, a holistic defense-in-depth approach is suggested in order to avoid excessive granularity and lack of compatibility between different layers of protection. What if terrorists gained access to a reactor? In recent years, the Energy Department has tried to make its operations more transparent, but it still needs to reach out to the public to win trust. Among civilians in surrounding communities, UNSCEAR found 1,800 cases of thyroid cancer, mostly in children, and predicted more would develop. The NRC requires nuclear plant owners to protect such critical digital systems from cyberattack. The Department of Homeland Securitywarnedin March that Russian government hackers had been targeting the nuclear industry, among others, as part of a broad two-year campaign that looks to exploit trusted third-party suppliers with less secure networks.. Despite the devastating effects a cyber-attack could have on NPP's, it is unclear how control room operations. Fuel rods are so radioactive that anyone coming within a few feet of them would become extremely ill and die within hours if not minutes. For political reasons, WIPP is permitted by Congress and the state of New Mexico to accept only certain military waste. Could terrorists unleash a Chernobyl on our soil? American reactors have a completely different design. Every year in the United States alone, coal-fired plants, which provide about half of the nations electricity, expel, along with toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases, 100 times the radioactivity of nuclear plants: hundreds of tons of uranium and thorium, daughter products like radium and radon, and hundreds of pounds of uranium-235. Part of Springer Nature. The threat of a cyberattack against nuclear power plants has been growing, according to a report. Mr. Akulov, Mr. Gavrilov and Mr. Tyukov are accused of hacking Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, The power plant officials stated that Kudankulam and other Indian nuclear power plants are stand-alone and not connected to outside cyber network and Internet. Late last week, the Washington Post had an article asking the question whether nuclear power plants are at risk of cyber attack. Nuclear weapons that have been accidentally dropped from aircraft or involved in plane crashes, for instance, have not exploded. Palmer, whose professional interests emphasize international nuclear security and nonproliferation, is joined on the project by two cybersecurity experts as co-PIs. in Computer Science and Engineering from Bengal Engineering College, India, (currently known as Bengal Engineering and Science University) in 1984. Parkhouse declined to say whether that was a vendor or some other organization, but stressed that the practice is the exception rather than the norm and that hes had success in stamping it out. Meaning, if you flagged no vulnerabilities, you could be eligible for a bonus. An aircraft diving into an above-ground nuclear waste dump could not cause a nuclear explosion. The waste pools contain practically no burnable materials. Terms, Conditions, and Privacy Policy. The process industries place great reliance on layers-of-defenses, or barrier thinking, to protect against incidents. Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health Given information now available, one can state that if the small target a pool presents were actually hit and coolant water were drained, spent fuel bundles would melt, react with the concrete and soil below the pools, and solidify into a massin effect causing containment. A similar meltdown at the Three Mile Island power plant in 1979one caused by equipment malfunctions and human failure to grasp what was happening and respond appropriatelyinvolved no large explosion, no breach. Beardsley, the NRC official, told me the commission plans to review the regulations, which analysts credit as the most scrupulous cybersecurity standards in the ICS industry, in 2019, and update them where necessary. Quanyan Zhu: Dr. Quanyan Zhu received B. Eng. Take the Morpho Itemiser 3, a prototype of the device the Transportation Security Administration uses to screen airport travelers for explosives and narcotics. According to Singer, many of those vulnerabilities were introduced early in the supply chain. The Stuxnet, Other common manmade sources include mining residues, microwave ovens, televisions, smoke detectors, and cigarette smokea pack and a half a day equals four daily chest x-rays. Whether low-dosage radiation below a certain threshold poses no danger and may in fact be essential to organisms is controversial (the Department of Energy began the human genome project to help determine if such a threshold exists). An introduction to the stochastic game formulation of the attacker-defender interaction in the context of cyber-attacks on industrial control systems to compute optimal response strategies is presented. Coal pollutants are estimated to cause about 15,000 premature deaths annually in the United States. While there is no evidence that the vendors have clients in the nuclear industry, experts say that attack vectorone that exploits publicly-available software updatesis a logical one in any industry. Could terrorists make a dirty bomb capable of widespread contamination and deaths from radiation? Tell Congress we need electric vehicle infrastructure nationwide. Meanwhile, here are some basics. Her research lies in risk and reliability analysis and in human factors, instrumentation and control, including human reliability analysis, probabilistic analysis of dynamics for complex systems, reliability analysis of digital instrumentation and control systems, software reliability modeling and software test automation, and distributed test facility design. Starting a chain reaction is not simple. Radiological harm would be negligible, if any occurred at all. He received his Ph.D. degree in Information Technology from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA in 1997. UN Security Council Resolution 1540 prohibits states from providing support to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear terrorism and requires the adoption and enforcement of laws to prevent proliferationbut says nothing about the drone, nanotech, or cyber threats. Weve seen malware impact energy systems dating as far back as 2003, when the Microsoft SQL Server worm, Slammer, infected an Ohio-based nuclear power plant network, causing a temporary outage, Spinner added. Democracy and science can be powerful partners for the public goodand both are under attack. The Energy Departments nine national laboratories have begun an extensive review of counterterrorism, including the vulnerability of U.S. nuclear sites and materials. Sixteen plants have already converted to dry casks, and more will follow. Certain forms of radiation are more hazardous to humans, depending on the type of particles emitted. Highly enriched uraniumvery problematic to acquirewould have to be correctly contained to obtain an explosion. It is imperative that the nuclear industry understand and have a methodology to quantify this risk, so as to best protect critical assets at the plant and ensure safety.. Physical and cyber threats It is not news that security is weak at many civilian nuclear power and research facilities. On September 11, all nuclear facilities were put on highest alert indefinitely. Ultimately, Plixer CEO Mike Patterson said by email, complete prevention simply isnt possible. Indias largest nuclear power plant was reportedly hit by a piece of malware that has been linked to North Korean hackers. Investigating Cyber Threats in a Nuclear Power Plant. Could they steal an American nuclear weapon and detonate it? Palmer says the collaborative aspect of the work is particularly appealing to her. And because most high-level waste is isolated on big reservations like Hanford and Savannah River, which are fenced in and under heavy surveillance, casual access is highly unlikely. - 87.98.218.148. It was only shortly after he presented his Itemiser findings four years ago, for example, that he learned how the device was used in the nuclear sector. Climate change is one of the most devastating problems humanity has ever facedand the clock is running out. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12711-3, eBook Packages: This grant is the first externally funded collaboration at Oregon State spanning the two engineering disciplines in the emerging field of nuclear cybersecurity. Some atoms lose their energy rapidly; others remain dangerous for thousands, even millions of years. Would a jet plane crashing into a waste pool cause a nuclear explosion? Washington, DC 20036 ST.. PAUL, Minn. (AP) Minnesota regulators said Thursday theyre monitoring the cleanup of a leak of 400,000 gallons of radioactive water from Xcel Energys Monticello nuclear power plant, and the company said theres no danger to the public. A typical American nuclear plant has between roughly 1,000 and 2,000 critical digital assets, or digital components and support systems that impact safety, security, or emergency preparedness, according to Jim Beardsley, a cybersecurity official at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. IECON 2011 - 37th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. Investigating cyber threats in a nuclear power plant. That makes the supply chain, with its often far-flung production sites, a logical target for well-resourced hackers looking for a foothold into a facility. April 28, 2018. As many nuclear power plants were built decades ago, the industry has long employed analog equipment, gear that has no digital component and is therefore immune to hacking as we know it today. Suite #615 FIG. No. Its burial has been the goal of the Energy Department and the NRC for decades, but political and bureaucratic obstacles, rather than lack of scientific know-how, have slowed progress. The entire volume of Understanding Cyber Conflict: 14 Analogies is available for download Neither medical nor WIPP-destined waste would provide much radioactivity because of the low concentration of radionuclides. These days, companies in charge of some of the United States most critical infrastructure hire WhiteScope, Rioss cybersecurity firm, to breach systems and then explain how they did it, all to prepare for the real thing. UCS experts are closely tracking Putin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Risk management is an ongoing process, he said. Technical Security Guidance and Evaluation for Nuclear Power Plant Cyber Networks. Mock raids of the kind used to test nuclear power plants have been conducted to uncover weaknesses at weapons research sites. In October 2012, Greenpeace activists In the 1980s, the Energy Department began a massive cleanup, the worlds largest public works project ever. In the United States the medium is water, which also acts as a coolant. Learn more. The NRC makes security rules that all plants must follow, covering issues such as security access zones, the kinds of threats plant security systems must be prepared to meet, the size and capabilities of security staffing, and how often security systems must be tested. In terms of cyber security, NPPs can be infected by malicious codes when the I&C devices provided by supply chains are connected to the nuclear system and contained infected malicious codes. Could terrorists rob a weapons facility of weapons-grade plutonium or uranium? He has served as the general chair or the TPC chair of the 7th and the 11th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security (GameSec) in 2016 and 2020, the 9th International Conference on NETwork Games, COntrol and OPtimisation (NETGCOOP) in 2018, the 5th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Security (ICAIS 2019) in 2019, and 2020 IEEE Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS). Discovering such vulnerabilities is not necessarily a cause for concern. Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Computer Science (BRIEFSCOMPUTER). Diagnostic medical radiation: 40 millirem (60 millirem in the United States). 699 KB PDF. Cosmic rays, sunlight, rocks, soil, radon, water, and even the human body are radioactiveblood and bones contain radionuclides. In one case, Hays explained, a documented control had an effective date of the audit, meaning it had been assembled expressly for the inspection. As a precaution, no-fly zones have been imposed over all nuclear power plants. Government Policy toward Open Source Software, Dual-use regulation: Managing hate and terrorism online before and after Section 230 reform, Washington may be about to take a giant step backward in closing the digital divide. These days citizens have become acutely aware of the waste pools and have questioned their presence in populated areas, yet environmental activists have long sought to keep nuclear waste at power plants, insisting that its removal poses grave dangers. Carol Smidts, Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Camille Palmer (left), associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, is a co-principle investigator, along with two cybersecurity experts at You have more than eight years of industrial cybersecurity history that is not reflected in those regulations, said Michael Toecker, a cybersecurity engineer for industrial systems. 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