Pattern-based modeling of cyber-physical systems for analyzing security

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems are a crucial part of many infrastructure or production systems, and are spreading into other domains as part of the IoT (Internet-of-Things) wave. As cyber-physical systems act on the physical world, attacks could have severe consequences. At the same time, cyber-physical systems can be attacked like other IT systems. So it is essential that developers consider security during the design phase of software, to design adequate security protection for the system. This fact requires a structured security analysis right from the beginning. The initial input of such a security analysis is a system overview, e.g. in form of an architecture. It is a challenging task to provide the appropriate abstraction level of the system that allows identifying security threats and weaknesses.