arXiv subjects

Barbara Russo

Publications and source records attributed to Barbara Russo.

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Architecture and Its Vulnerabilities in Smart-Lighting Systems

Industry 4.0 embodies one of the significant technological changes of this decade. Cyber-physical systems and the Internet Of Things are two central technologies in this change that embed or connect with sensors and actuators and interact with the physical environment. However, such systems-of-systems undergo additional restrictions in an endeavor to maintain reliability and security when building and interconnecting components to a heterogeneous, multi-domain \textit{Smart-*} systems architecture. This paper presents an application-specific, layer-based approach to an offline security analysis inspired by design science that merges preceding expertise from relevant domains. With the example of a Smart-lighting system, we create a dedicated unified taxonomy for the use case and analyze its distributed Smart-* architecture by multiple layer-based models. We derive potential attacks from the system specifications in an iterative and incremental process and discuss resulting threats and vulnerabilities. Finally, we suggest immediate countermeasures for the latter potential multiple-domain security concerns.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

Towards Risk Modeling for Collaborative AI

Collaborative AI systems aim at working together with humans in a shared space to achieve a common goal. This setting imposes potentially hazardous circumstances due to contacts that could harm human beings. Thus, building such systems with strong assurances of compliance with requirements domain specific standards and regulations is of greatest importance. Challenges associated with the achievement of this goal become even more severe when such systems rely on machine learning components rather than such as top-down rule-based AI. In this paper, we introduce a risk modeling approach tailored to Collaborative AI systems. The risk model includes goals, risk events and domain specific indicators that potentially expose humans to hazards. The risk model is then leveraged to drive assurance methods that feed in turn the risk model through insights extracted from run-time evidence. Our envisioned approach is described by means of a running example in the domain of Industry 4.0, where a robotic arm endowed with a visual perception component, implemented with machine learning, collaborates with a human operator for a production-relevant task.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2020

Improving Predictability of User-Affecting Metrics to Support Anomaly Detection in Cloud Services

Anomaly detection systems aim to detect and report attacks or unexpected behavior in networked systems. Previous work has shown that anomalies have an impact on system performance, and that performance signatures can be effectively used for implementing an IDS. In this paper, we present an analytical and an experimental study on the trade-off between anomaly detection based on performance signatures and system scalability. The proposed approach combines analytical modeling and load testing to find optimal configurations for the signature-based IDS. We apply a heavy-tail bi-modal modeling approach, where "long" jobs represent large resource consuming transactions, e.g., generated by DDoS attacks; the model was parametrized using results obtained from controlled experiments. For performance purposes, mean response time is the key metric to be minimized, whereas for security purposes, response time variance and classification accuracy must be taken into account. The key insights from our analysis are: (i) there is an optimal number of servers which minimizes the response time variance, (ii) the sweet-spot number of servers that minimizes response time variance and maximizes classification accuracy is typically smaller than or equal to the one that minimizes mean response time. Therefore, for security purposes, it may be worth slightly sacrificing performance to increase classification accuracy.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2020

ODRE Workshop: Probabilistic Dynamic Hard Real-Time Scheduling in HPC

Industry 4.0 is changing fundamentally the way data is collected, stored and analyzed in industrial processes. While this change enables novel application such as flexible manufacturing of highly customized products, the real-time control of these processes, however, has not yet realized its full potential. We believe that modern virtualization techniques, specifically application containers, present a unique opportunity to decouple control functionality from associated hardware. Through it, we can fully realize the potential for highly distributed and transferable industrial processes even with real-time constraints arising from time-critical sub-processes. In this paper, we present a specifically developed orchestration tool to manage the challenges and opportunities of shifting industrial control software from dedicated hardware to bare-metal servers or (edge) cloud computing platforms. Using off-the-shelf technology, the proposed tool can manage the execution of containerized applications on shared resources without compromising hard real-time execution determinism. Through first experimental results, we confirm the viability and analyzed the behavior of resource shared systems with strict real-time requirements. We then describe experiments set out to deliver expected results and gather performance, application scope and limits of the presented approach.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2020

Industrial Control via Application Containers:Maintaining determinism in IAAS

Industry 4.0 is changing fundamentally data collection, its storage and analysis in industrial processes, enabling novel application such as flexible manufacturing of highly customized products. Real-time control of these processes, however, has not yet realized its full potential in using the collected data to drive further development. Indeed, typical industrial control systems are tailored to the plant they need to control, making reuse and adaptation a challenge. In the past, the need to solve plant specific problems overshadowed the benefits of physically isolating a control system from its plant. We believe that modern virtualization techniques, specifically application containers, present a unique opportunity to decouple control from plants. This separation permits us to fully realize the potential for highly distributed, and transferable industrial processes even with real-time constraints arising from time-critical sub-processes. In this paper, we explore the challenges and opportunities of shifting industrial control software from dedicated hardware to bare-metal servers or (edge) cloud computing platforms using off-the-shelf technology. We present a migration architecture and show, using a specifically developed orchestration tool, that containerized applications can run on shared resources without compromising scheduled execution within given time constraints. Through latency and computational performance experiments we explore limits of three system setups and summarize lessons learned.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2019

Industrial Control via Application Containers: Migrating from Bare-Metal to IAAS

We explore the challenges and opportunities of shifting industrial control software from dedicated hardware to bare-metal servers or cloud computing platforms using off the shelf technologies. In particular, we demonstrate that executing time-critical applications on cloud platforms is viable based on a series of dedicated latency tests targeting relevant real-time configurations.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2019

On Testing Data-Intensive Software Systems

Today's software systems like cyber-physical production systems or big data systems have to process large volumes and diverse types of data which heavily influences the quality of these so-called data-intensive systems. However, traditional software testing approaches rather focus on functional behavior than on data aspects. Therefore, the role of data in testing has to be rethought and specific testing approaches for data-intensive software systems are required. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to contribute to this area by (1) providing basic terminology and background on data-intensive software systems and their testing, and (2) presenting the state of the research and the hot topics in the area. Finally, the directions of research and the new frontiers on testing data-intensive software systems are discussed.

cs.SE↗