Control systems (SCADA) software development

Overview

Topic status: We're looking for students to study this topic.

Control systems are widely used to manage critical infrastructures, such as power plants and water utilities. One of the most commonly used control systems is the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system. Historically, SCADA systems existed in isolation from other systems, hence, ensuring the security of the systems (especially from remote attackers) was often neglected. However, nowadays, SCADA systems are increasingly interconnected with other systems (such as the corporate systems and the Internet), exposing the previously‐isolated SCADA systems to a wide‐range of security attacks from other connected systems, including the Internet.

This situation warrants a comprehensive study of the security of SCADA systems in such an interconnected environment. Unfortunately, due to the critical services that SCADA systems provide, running experiments on production SCADA systems is clearly not an option. Thus, a SCADA testbed that mimics the operations of a `real' SCADA system is needed. Preliminary SCADA testbed has been developed at QUT; however, it is still incomplete. This Honours research project will continue the development of the SCADA testbed. In particular, this project involves the development of a SCADA system human interface (also known as the Human‐Machine Interface ‐ HMI) for the existing testbed using open SCADA software.

Aims

The aims of this topic are to:

  • develop a useful HMI for the existing SCADA testbed system
  • investigate the range of SCADA devices supported by these open‐source SCADA software, and how those devices should be deployed in the existing testbed
  • investigate the (in)adequacy of existing open‐source SCADA software in developing HMI.

Approaches

The approaches include:

  • a literature review of existing SCADA testbed architecture and the related HMI software
  • an implementation of a prototype SCADA HMI software for the existing SCADA testbed
  • investigation (and possibly deployment) of suitable low‐cost SCADA devices supported by the HMI software
  • a series of experiments to demonstrate the adequacy of the HMI in managing the SCADA devices and other related operations of the SCADA systems.

References

  • Stouffer, K., Falco, J., Kent, K.: Guide to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Industrial Control Systems Security. In: Recommendations o the National Institute of Standards and Technology (2006).
  • Open Source SCADA tools: http://m2mtoolbox.com/opensourcescada/
Study level
Honours
Supervisors
QUT
Organisational unit

Science and Engineering Faculty

Research area

Computer Science

Contact
Please contact a supervisor for enquiries.