US Navy Deploys RHIMES System to Prevent Hackers From Attacking PLC’s on Ships

In response to the myriad of recent “cyber security” attacks, the United State Navy is developing the Resilient Hull, Mechanical, and Electrical Security (RHIMES) system as part of an initiative to deter hackers from attempting to go after its shipboard mechanical and electrical control systems.

While hackers have been known to tap into machines in the networked world, machines in the physical world such as industrial plants, electric power grids, cars, trains, planes, and ships can be just as vulnerable.

“The purpose of RHIMES is to enable us to fight through a cyber attack,” said Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Mat Winter. “This technology will help the Navy protect its shipboard physical systems, but it may also have important applications to protecting our nation’s physical infrastructure.”

Specifically, RHIMES is designed to prevent a hacker from taking over or disabling the programmable logic controllers on the ship, the hardware components that interface with the vessel’s physical systems.

“Some examples of the types of shipboard systems that RHIMES is looking to protect include damage control and firefighting, anchoring, climate control, electric power, hydraulics, steering and engine control,” said Dr. Ryan Craven, a program officer of the Cyber Security and Complex Software Systems Program in the Mathematics Computer and Information Sciences Division of the Office of Naval Research. “It essentially touches all parts of the ship.”

Attacks on mechanical systems aren’t unheard of, with a German steel mill being compromised in as recently as 2014.

“The hackers reportedly got in and overheated a blast furnace, and even made it so that the plant workers couldn’t properly shut down the furnace, causing massive damage to the system,” said Craven.

Before RHIMES, security was always one step behind hackers because as new threats were introduced, databases needed to updated and new signatures issued creating a viscous cycle.

However, “RHIMES relies on advanced cyber resiliency techniques to introduce diversity and stop entire classes of attacks at once,” Craven said.

Basically, by integrating diversity into programming and replacing redundant backups, systems can’t be hacked all at once and a system can remain operational in the event of a controller failure.

“Functionally, all of the controllers do the same thing, but RHIMES introduces diversity via a slightly different implementation for each controller’s program,” Craven explained. “In the event of a cyber attack, RHIMES makes it so that a different hack is required to exploit each controller. The same exact exploit can’t be used against more than one controller.”

He added, “Vulnerabilities exist wherever computing intersects with the physical world, such as in factories, cars and aircraft and these vulnerabilities could potentially benefit from the same techniques for cyber resilience.”

Tags: plc RHIMES, RHIMES, RHIMES navy, RHIMES programmable logic controller, RHIMES US Navy

This entry was posted on September 21st, 2015 and is filed under General. Both comments and pings are currently closed.