Virtual Control Systems

UAH has developed 2 virtual gas pipelines with high fidelity to real gas pipelines. We are currently developing virtual models of a mass damper, distillation tower, industrial robot, and diesel generator with funding from the National Science Foundation. The virtual control systems use the OpenPLC. OpenPLC has physical and virtual realizations and was developed by Thiago Alves, a UAH PhD student.

Paper citations:

1. Reaves, B., Morris, T. An Open Virtual Testbed for Industrial Control System Security Research. International Journal of Information Security (IJIS). Springer. Volume 11, Issue 4 (2012), Page 215-229. DOI: 10.1007/s10207-012-0164-7 link

2. Thornton, Z., Morris, T., "Improving a Virtual SCADA Cyber Security Laboratory Using Simulink," in Critical Infrastructure Protection IX, Sujeet Shenoi and Johnathan Butts, Eds. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2015. link

Pipeline 1: is a virtual copy of a small laboratory scale pipeline.

Pipeline 2: is a modeled 15KM 5 pump station pipeline which moves liquefied butane or propane. This type of pipeline is used to move liquefied gasses from ship to shore.

This work was presented at a CAE Tech Talk on Dec 8, 2016. A video of the Tech Talk is available here.

Alves, T. Virtualizing Industrial Control Systems Testbeds for Cybersecurity Research, CAE Tech Talk, No. 29, December 8, 2016. [Online], Available at https://capitol.instructure.com/courses/510/external_tools/66.

The work was also presented at the Second Annual Industrial Control System Security (ICSS) Workshop.

Alves, T., Das, R. Morris, T. Virtualization of Industrial Control System Testbeds for Cybersecurity. Second Annual Industrial Control System Security (ICSS) Workshop at the 2016 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference. Los Angeles, CA. December 5-9, 2016. (slides).

Below are 2 other videos about the virtual control systems.

The first video is a presentation from a conference. Thiago Alves and Rishabh Das, both UAH PhD students, provide a more detailed the virtual gas pipeline and its components. There is a table below the video with times for key portions of the presentation.

Note: for the cyber-attack described at 15:45, Ettercap was used to perform a man-in-the-middle attack. For this attack, Modbus/TCP commands sent from the HMI to PLC to set the pressure operation range (low and high pressure set points) were altered in transit to tell the PLC the pressure set points were 20 PSI higher than the HMI intended. Sensor measurements sent from the PLC to HMI were also altered in transit to subtract 20 PSI. As such, the HMI continues to believe the pipeline is operating with lower set points while the PLC controls the system with potentially dangerous set points.

This video gives an overview of the technology, demos a virtual gas pipeline, then has a longer section with more details. Our current work is a platform for future development. UAH is always looking for sponsors and customers interested helping drive this research forward. This video uses an older version of our Human Machine Interface (HMI) GUI.

There are 3 segments to the video:

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