Ransomware in Industrial Control Systems

Apply

Project Description

According to a recent report, ransomware attacks on industrial entities increased more than 500% from 2018 to 2020. What is more, in 2020, ransomware, targeted ransomware, supply chain breaches and cloud connectivity all emerged as top-of-mind concerns for security teams at industrial enterprises. One of the biggest cyberattacks in history – the SolarWinds Orion supply chain breach – impacted as many as 18,000 organizations, many of which were industrial enterprises with physical operations. As a result, this project will study effective defense-in-depth security strategies, ensure an understanding of network interdependencies, and conduct crown jewel analysis to identify potential weaknesses that could disrupt business continuity and production in the event of ransomwares.
Program - Computer Science
Division - Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering
Field of Study - Computer Science and Engineering

About the
Researcher

Charalambos Konstantinou

Charalambos Konstantinou

Desired Project Deliverables

In this project, the students will examine the security issues of supply chain ransomware in industrial control systems (ICS) environments. One direction would be to investigate the applicability of unidirectional gateway technology to provide robust protection from such targeted attacks. Other methods include investigation of deep learning malware detector indicators.