ISuTest®: Automated vulnerability assessment for industrial automation components

More and more machines and systems in the manufacturing industry are networked. This opens up opportunities, for example to improve processes with generated data. At the same time, however, there are also risks, as industrial automation components become more susceptible to faults and attacks via the network.

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The Industrial Security Testing Framework ISuTest is a tool for finding vulnerabilities in networked automation components. Discovered vulnerabilities can be fixed by the manufacturer, thus reducing the component's attack surface. In the future, robustness against attacks will be a quality criterion that manufacturers can use to set themselves apart from others.

The ISuTest is designed as an open, extensible framework and thus sets itself apart from commercial competitors with closed-source software. The direct target group of the ISuTest are manufacturers and integrators of automation components. It supports its users from the setup of a vulnerability test to the execution to the isolation of vulnerabilities to the post-processing of the bug to the developer, who can subsequently fix it.

First successes with the ISuTest could be achieved by the discovery of several weaknesses confirmed by the manufacturers. Companies use the ISuTest laboratory operated by the Fraunhofer IOSB in Karlsruhe to test their automation components for vulnerabilities. First cooperations for the integration of ISuTest into the development process of manufacturers have begun. These successes show: The ISuTest opens up the domain of security testing to automation experts - the vision of "Security by Design" becomes realizable in practice.

ISuTest is being further developed in scientific co-operation with KASTEL.

Idea

© Fraunhofer IOSB

Idea

The protection of industrial automation components such as programmable logic controllers, human-machine interfaces or gateways against attacks via the network is only slowly gaining importance for component manufacturers, even today. Examples of discovered vulnerabilities show that a single network packet can lead to a crash of the component or even to the shutdown of an entire system (Phoenix Contact, 2018).

A decisive reason for this lack of interest is the lack of affordable tools that can be used intuitively by automation experts. Although commercial integrated test systems are available on the market, their six-figure entry price in euros sets high hurdles for their use. As closed-source software, they cannot be extended by the user. In addition, they require deeper network, protocol and security knowledge when analyzing their test results. In addition, there are free implementations, which, however, only cover partial areas of the functionality required for comprehensive tests of industrial automation systems.

Against this background the idea was born in 2016 to develop the Industrial Security Testing Framework ISuTest, an open, transparently comprehensible and expandable tool for testing industrial automation components. In particular, other, specialized test tools such as vulnerability scanners or web security scanners should be able to be controlled and integrated.

Studies such as the vulnerability assessment of six German automation components presented at the German IT Security Congress of the BSI have impressively proven the practical suitability of ISuTest (Pfrang, S., & Borcherding, A., 2019). The target group of ISuTest is the industry that produces or integrates network-compatible sensors, actuators and controllers. These are experts in their respective fields, and ISuTest helps them deliver their products with fewer vulnerabilities through automated security testing, thus providing better protection against network attacks.