The Internet is continuously changing and evolving. The main communication form of present Internet is humanhuman. The Internet of Things (IoT) can be considered as the future evaluation of the Internet that realizes machine-to-machine (M2M) learning. Thus, IoT provides connectivity for everyone and everything. The IoT embeds some intelligence in Internetconnected objects to communicate, exchange information, take decisions, invoke actions and provide amazing services. This paper addresses the existing development trends, the generic architecture of IoT, its distinguishing features and possible future applications. This paper also forecast the key challenges associated with the development of IoT. The IoT is getting increasing popularity for academia, industry as well as government that has the potential to bring significant personal, professional and economic benefits.

Abstract-Critical infrastructures and industrial control systems are complex Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). To ensure reliable operations of such systems, comprehensive threat modeling during system design and validation is of paramount significance. Previous works in literature mostly focus on safety, risks and hazards in CPS but lack effective threat modeling necessary to eliminate cyber vulnerabilities. Further, impact of cyber attacks on physical processes is not fully understood. This paper presents a comprehensive threat modeling framework for CPS using STRIDE, a systematic approach for ensuring system security at the component level. This paper first devises a feasible and effective methodology for applying STRIDE and then demonstrates it against a real synchrophasor-based synchronous islanding testbed in the laboratory. It investigates (i) what threat types could emerge in each system component based on the security properties lacking, and (ii) how a vulnerability in a system component risks the entire system security. The paper identifies that STRIDE is a light-weight and effective threat modeling methodology for CPS that simplifies the task for security analysts to identify vulnerabilities and plan appropriate component level security measures at the system design stage.

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The BlackEnergy malware targeting critical infrastructures has a long history. It evolved over time from a simple DDoS platform to a quite sophisticated plug-in based malware. The plug-in architecture has a persistent malware core with easily installable attack specific modules for DDoS, spamming, info-stealing, remote access, boot-sector formatting etc. BlackEnergy has been involved in several high profile cyber physical attacks including the recent Ukraine power grid attack in December 2015. This paper investigates the evolution of BlackEnergy and its cyber attack capabilities. It presents a basic cyber attack model used by BlackEnergy for targeting industrial control systems. In particular, the paper analyzes cyber threats of BlackEnergy for synchrophasor based systems which are used for real-time control and monitoring functionalities in smart grid. Several BlackEnergy based attack scenarios have been investigated by exploiting the vulnerabilities in two widely used synchrophasor communication standards: (i) IEEE C37.118 and (ii) IEC 61850-90-5. Specifically, the paper addresses reconnaissance, DDoS, man-in-the-middle and replay/reflection attacks on IEEE C37.118 and IEC 61850-90-5. Further, the paper also investigates protection strategies for detection and prevention of BlackEnergy based cyber physical attacks.

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