Cybersecurity in Robotics: Challenges, Quantitative Modeling, and Practice

Abstract

Robotics is becoming more and more ubiquitous, but the pressure to bring systems to market occasionally goes at the cost of neglecting security mechanisms during the development, deployment or while in production. As a result, contemporary robotic systems are vulnerable to diverse attack patterns, and an a posteriori hardening is at least challenging, if not impossible at all. This book aims to stipulate the inclusion of security in robotics from the earliest design phases onward and with a special focus on the cost-benefit tradeoff that can otherwise be an inhibitor for the fast development of affordable systems. We advocate quantitative methods of security management and design, covering vulnerability scoring systems tailored to robotic systems, and accounting for the highly distributed nature of robots as an interplay of potentially very many components. A powerful quantitative approach to model-based security is offered by game theory, providing a rich spectrum of techniques to optimize security against various kinds of attacks. Such a multiperspective view on security is necessary to address the heterogeneity and complexity of robotic systems. This book is intended as an accessible starter for the theoretician and practitioner working in the field.

GAZETA: GAme-Theoretic ZEro-Trust Authentication for Defense Against Lateral Movement in 5G IoT Networks

“…First, the increased connectivity in an IoT network inevitably enlarges the attack surface and enables the attacker to access the system from multiple entry points [1]. Second, modern 5G IoT networks consist of heterogeneous devices, diverse applications, and third-party services, and not all of them are accompanied by regular security updates [2]. It leads to multiple vulnerabilities that can be exploited by an attacker to access the network.…”

Scenario-Agnostic Zero-Trust Defense with Explainable Threshold Policy: A Meta-Learning Approach

“…The recent advances in cloud services, data communication, and automation technologies have increased flexibility and efficiency in modern network systems [1]. However, the adoption of smart devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought up new and expanding cyber risks, not just capable of impacting a particular device but creating severe concerns in the whole system [2]. The increasing connectivity, heterogeneity, and dynamic accessing environments inevitably enlarge the attack surface and lead to multiple vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit.…”