critical MCU, cost/power reduction and wireless connectivity. ... innovative features,- apart from low cost and low power. .... Digital Signature Standard (DSS).
International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013)
Hashing Based Authentication for Ultra-Low Cost Low Power SCADA Application Using MSP430 Microcontroller Nabil Litayem1, Manjur Kolhar2, Imene Mhadhbi3, Saied M. Abd El-atty4, Slim Ben Saoud5 1,2,4
Computer Science and Information, Salman Bin Abdulaziz University, Wadi College of Arts and Science, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 3,5 LSA Laboratory, INSAT-EPT, University of Carthage, TUNISIA The ubiquity requires many careful security considerations to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of such systems. Any compromise in SCADA system security can have serious consequences [4]. During this last decade, many research works have studied the security of such system and proposed innovative solutions, [5], [6], and [7]. In this study, we introduce an authentication solution using a hashing algorithm for MSP430 microcontroller for SCADA RTU. The proposed solution has the authentication system or algorithm using various profiles of Quark [8] hashing algorithm, which are chosen after qualitative and quantitative surveys that are presented in this paper. The remainder of this work is organized as follows: Section 2, gives a presentation of MSP430 development platform, followed by a survey about SCADA applications and their availability solutions and applications. In section 4, we present the choice and execution of the hashing algorithm. Finally, section 5 concludes this contribution.
Abstract— Nowadays SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems became widely used technology. This fact is directly related to the ubiquity of smart systems using a wide range of technologies in control and supervision applications. MCU technology are a very promising technology in this field especially, with the emergence of safety critical MCU, cost/power reduction and wireless connectivity. Due to the ubiquitous use of such technologies, security considerations must be considered. In this paper, we propose a RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) authentication solution that is based on a lightweight hashing algorithm. Proposed solution is suitable for SCADA systems using MSP430 ultra low power low cost MCU. This work is seen as a proof of concept of using such technology with freely available tools to add reliable authentication functionality of our previously designed SCADA systems. Keywords— SCADA, MSP430, RTU, Security, hash-based authentication.
I.
INTRODUCTION
Earlier SCADA system were based on an event-driven operating system and basic serial communications. This kind of solution does not have any security threats because complete physical isolation SCADA devices from any external intrusion. Thanks to Moor Law, SCADA ―Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition‖ [1] applications become cost effective and ubiquitous. Such solution are based on standard hardware, open source software and open protocols. SCADA applications are nowadays used in power distribution monitoring, nuclear simulators, military data acquisition, health care applications and many thousands of various applications [2], [3] furthermore, they are considered as a part of Internet of Things ecosystem.
II.
HARDWARE PLATFORM
A. Introduction to MSP430 Microcontroller Known for its low power consumption, MSP430 from Texas Instruments is a family of 16-bit microcontrollers commonly used in wireless sensors/actuator network and metering applications [8]. The utilization of these MCU becomes too broad due to the introduction of new innovative features,- apart from low cost and low power. The main features of MSP430 microcontroller are summarized in Table 1.
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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013) TABLE 1. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MSP430 MCU
Feature Instruction sets Registers Memory Addressing modes Peripherals
Frequency Electric Power On-Chip Memory
Description 27 RISC instructions 12 general purpose registers 16 Bit Word or Bytes Addressing Register direct, register indexed, register indirect and register indirect USART, SPI, I²C, 10/12/14/16-bit ADCs, internal oscillator, timer, PWM, watch dog, brownout reset circuitry, comparators, on-chip op-amps, 12-bit DAC, LCD driver, hardware multiplier, USB, and DMA 1Mhz- 25Mhz
