We have two invited talks in the upcoming S4 event.

The first talk introduces a proposed new security term to the control system community, Denial of Control. Mark Fabro of Lofty Perch and Zach Tudor of SRI contend that this is more and different than Denial of Service attacks. Since we are dealing with control systems, perhaps it does make sense to focus more on denial of control – - if it is not just a different name for denial of service. This should spark some lively discussion and perhaps a couple of research project ideas.

For the second talk, we wanted to bring in a virtualization expert. The potential benefits of virtualization are significant including very fast recovery, improved redundancy, legacy OS support, and testing. Yet it is rarely used in the control system community primarily because of concerns about reliable performance. Rafael Echemendia from Terremark has been involved in many large, high performance planning and deployments of virtualization. He will present the factors affecting the performance of VM’s and some hard, real world numbers.

Digital Bond’s SCADA Security Scientific Symposium is Jan 21-22 in Miami Beach with an advanced control system security course on Jan 20th. For more information on the event and registration check out these links:

• Agenda at a Glance
• See the full agenda with detailed paper descriptions
• Register to be a physical or virtual S4 attendee

Other S4 Previews

• Leveraging Ethernet Card Vulnerabilities in Field Devices
• S4 Keynote: Dr. Ross Anderson – The Economics of Control System Security
• Jamming and Interference Induced Denial of Service Attacks on IEEE 802.15.4 Based Wireless Networks
• Hardware Vulnerabilities in 802.15.4 Implementations
• Estimating 0days in Control Systems
• Security Metrics for Cyber Security Assurance
• Two New Directions in Control System Perimeter Security
• Customizing Control System Intrusion Detection at the Application Layer