Catastrophic Cyber-Physical Malware

Abstract

With the advent of highly sophisticated cyber-physical malware (CPM) such as Industroyer, a cyberattack could be as destructive as the terrorist attack on 9/11, and it would virtually paralyze the nation. We discuss as the major risks the vulnerability of: telecommunication infrastructure, industrial control systems (ICS), and mission-critical software.

In differentiating CPM from traditional malware, the difference really comes from the open-ended possibilities for malware triggers resulting from the wide spectrum of sensor inputs, and the almost limitless application-specific possibilities for designing malicious payloads.

Fundamentally, the challenges of detecting sophisticated CPM stem from the complexities inherent in the software at the heart of cyber-physical systems. We discuss three fundamental challenges: explosion of execution behaviors, computational intractability of checking feasible behaviors, and difficult-to-analyze programming constructs.

In detecting novel CPM, the tasks are: developing plausible hypotheses for malware trigger and malicious payload, analyzing software to gather evidence based on CPM hypotheses, and verifying software to prove or refute a hypothesis based on the gathered evidence. We discuss research directions for effective automation to support these tasks.

This material is based on research sponsored by DARPA under agreement numbers FA8750-15-2-0080 and FA8750-12-2-0126. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of DARPA or the U.S. Government.