Different attacks can have different impact and/or mitigation depending on the use case, so we would like to make this association in our analysis. However, since there is a potentially unbounded list of use cases, we categorize the attacks with respect to the common themes of the use cases as identified in
Section 11 of
RFC 8578.
See also
Table 2 for a mapping of the impact of attacks per use case by industry.
In this section, we review each theme and discuss the attacks that are applicable to that theme, as well as anything specific about the impact and mitigations for that attack with respect to that theme.
Table 5, Mapping between Themes and Attacks, then provides a summary of the attacks that are applicable to each theme.
DetNet is expected to run over various transmission mediums, with Ethernet being the first identified. Attacks such as Delay or Reconnaissance might be implemented differently on a different transmission medium; however, the impact on the DetNet as a whole would be essentially the same. We thus conclude that all attacks and impacts that would be applicable to DetNet over Ethernet (i.e., all those named in this document) would also be applicable to DetNet over other transmission mediums.
With respect to mitigations, some methods are specific to the Ethernet medium, for example, time-aware scheduling using 802.1Qbv [
IEEE802.1Qbv-2015] can protect against excessive use of bandwidth at the ingress -- for other mediums, other mitigations would have to be implemented to provide analogous protection.
A DetNet network can be controlled by a centralized network configuration and control system. Such a system may be in a single central location, or it may be distributed across multiple control entities that function together as a unified control system for the network.
All attacks named in this document that are relevant to controller plane packets (and the controller itself) are relevant to this theme, including Path Manipulation, Path Choice, Control Packet Modification or Injection, Reconnaissance, and Attacks on Time-Synchronization Mechanisms.
A DetNet network is not expected to be "plug and play"; it is expected that there is some centralized network configuration and control system. However, the ability to "hot swap" components (e.g., due to malfunction) is similar enough to "plug and play" that this kind of behavior may be expected in DetNet networks, depending on the implementation.
An attack surface related to hot swap is that the DetNet network must at least consider input at runtime from components that were not part of the initial configuration of the network. Even a "perfect" (or "hitless") replacement of a component at runtime would not necessarily be ideal, since presumably one would want to distinguish it from the original for OAM purposes (e.g., to report hot swap of a failed component).
This implies that an attack such as Flow Modification, Spoofing, or Inter-segment (which could introduce packets from a "new" component, i.e., one heretofore unknown on the network) could be used to exploit the need to consider such packets (as opposed to rejecting them out of hand as one would do if one did not have to consider introduction of a new component).
To mitigate this situation, deployments should provide a method for dynamic and secure registration of new components, and (possibly manual) deregistration and re-keying of retired components. This would avoid the situation in which the network must accommodate potentially insecure packet flows from unknown components.
Similarly, if the network was designed to support runtime replacement of a clock component, then presence (or apparent presence) and thus consideration of packets from a new such component could affect the network, or the time synchronization of the network, for example, by initiating a new Best Master Clock selection process. These types of attacks should therefore be considered when designing hot-swap-type functionality (see [
RFC 7384]).
DetNet specifies new YANG data models [
DETNET-YANG] that may present new attack surfaces. Per IETF guidelines, security considerations for any YANG data model are expected to be part of the YANG data model specification, as described in [
IETF-YANG-SEC].
A DetNet network integrates Layer 2 (bridged) networks (e.g., AVB/TSN LAN) and Layer 3 (routed) networks (e.g., IP) via the use of well-known protocols such as IP, MPLS Pseudowire, and Ethernet. Various DetNet documents address many specific aspects of Layer 2 and Layer 3 integration within a DetNet, and these are not individually referenced here; security considerations for those aspects are covered within those documents or within the related subsections of the present document.
Please note that although there are no entries in the L2 and L3 Integration line of the Mapping between Themes and Attacks table (
Table 5), this does not imply that there could be no relevant attacks related to L2-L3 integration.
Packets that are part of a resource-reserved DetNet flow are not to be dropped by the DetNet due to congestion. Packets may however be dropped for intended reasons, for example, security measures. For example, consider the case in which a packet becomes corrupted (whether incidentally or maliciously) such that the resulting flow ID incidentally matches the flow ID of another DetNet flow, potentially resulting in additional unauthorized traffic on the latter. In such a case, it may be a security requirement that the system report and/or take some defined action, perhaps when a packet drop count threshold has been reached (see also
Section 7.7).
A data plane attack may force packets to be dropped, for example, as a result of a Delay attack, Replication/Elimination attack, or Flow Modification attack.
The same result might be obtained by a Controller plane attack, e.g., Path Manipulation or Signaling Packet Modification.
An attack may also cause packets that should not be delivered to be delivered, such as by forcing packets from one (e.g., replicated) path to be preferred over another path when they should not be (Replication attack), or by Flow Modification, or Path Choice or Packet Injection. A Time-Synchronization attack could cause a system that was expecting certain packets at certain times to accept unintended packets based on compromised system time or time windowing in the scheduler.
There are many proprietary "fieldbuses" used in Industrial and other industries, as well as proprietary non-interoperable deterministic Ethernet-based networks. DetNet is intended to provide an open-standards-based alternative to such buses/networks. In cases where a DetNet intersects with such fieldbuses/networks or their protocols, such as by protocol emulation or access via a gateway, new attack surfaces can be opened.
For example, an Inter-segment or Controller plane attack such as Path Manipulation, Path Choice, or Control Packet Modification/Injection could be used to exploit commands specific to such a protocol or that are interpreted differently by the different protocols or gateway.
Most of the themes described in this document address OT (reserved) DetNet flows -- this item is intended to address issues related to IT traffic on a DetNet.
DetNet is intended to support coexistence of time-sensitive operational (OT, deterministic) traffic and informational (IT, "best effort") traffic on the same ("unified") network.
With DetNet, this coexistence will become more common, and mitigations will need to be established. The fact that the IT traffic on a DetNet is limited to a corporate-controlled network makes this a less difficult problem compared to being exposed to the open Internet; however, this aspect of DetNet security should not be underestimated.
An Inter-segment attack can flood the network with IT-type traffic with the intent of disrupting the handling of IT traffic and/or the goal of interfering with OT traffic. Presumably, if the DetNet flow reservation and isolation of the DetNet is well designed (better-designed than the attack), then interference with OT traffic should not result from an attack that floods the network with IT traffic.
The handling of IT traffic (i.e., traffic that by definition is not guaranteed any given deterministic service properties) by the DetNet will by definition not be given the DetNet-specific protections provided to DetNet (resource-reserved) flows. The implication is that the IT traffic on the DetNet network will necessarily have its own specific set of product (component or system) requirements for protection against attacks such as DoS; presumably they will be less stringent than those for OT flows, but nonetheless, component and system designers must employ whatever mitigations will meet the specified security requirements for IT traffic for the given component or DetNet.
The network design as a whole also needs to consider possible application-level dependencies of OT-type applications on services provided by the IT part of the network; for example, does the OT application depend on IT network services such as DNS or OAM? If such dependencies exist, how are malicious packet flows handled? Such considerations are typically outside the scope of DetNet proper, but nonetheless need to be addressed in the overall DetNet network design for a given use case.
Reserved bandwidth data flows (deterministic flows) must provide the allocated bandwidth and must be isolated from each other.
A Spoofing or Inter-segment attack that adds packet traffic to a bandwidth-reserved DetNet flow could cause that flow to occupy more bandwidth than it was allocated, resulting in interference with other DetNet flows.
A Flow Modification, Spoofing, Header Manipulation, or Control Packet Modification attack could cause packets from one flow to be directed to another flow, thus breaching isolation between the flows.
If bandwidth reservations are made for a DetNet flow but the associated bandwidth is not used at any point in time, that bandwidth is made available on the network for best-effort traffic. However, note that security considerations for best-effort traffic on a DetNet network is out of scope of the present document, provided that any such attacks on best-effort traffic do not affect performance for DetNet OT traffic.
The DetNet specifications as a whole are intended to enable an ecosystem in which multiple vendors can create interoperable products, thus promoting component diversity and potentially higher numbers of each component manufactured. Toward that end, the security measures and protocols discussed in this document are intended to encourage interoperability.
Given that the DetNet specifications are unambiguously written and that the implementations are accurate, the property of interoperability should not in and of itself cause security concerns; however, flaws in interoperability between components could result in security weaknesses. The network operator, as well as system and component designers, can all contribute to reducing such weaknesses through interoperability testing.
The DetNet network specifications are intended to enable an ecosystem in which multiple vendors can create interoperable products, thus promoting higher numbers of each component manufactured, promoting cost reduction and cost competition among vendors.
This envisioned breadth of DetNet-enabled products is in general a positive factor; however, implementation flaws in any individual component can present an attack surface. In addition, implementation differences between components from different vendors can result in attack surfaces (resulting from their interaction) that may not exist in any individual component.
Network operators can mitigate such concerns through sufficient product and interoperability testing.
The DetNet network specifications are intended to enable an ecosystem in which multiple vendors can create interoperable products, thus promoting component diversity and potentially higher numbers of each component manufactured. However, this raises the possibility that a vendor might repurpose for DetNet applications a hardware or software component that was originally designed for operation in an isolated OT network and thus may not have been designed to be sufficiently secure, or secure at all, against the sorts of attacks described in this document. Deployment of such a component on a DetNet network that is intended to be highly secure may present an attack surface; thus, the DetNet network operator may need to take specific actions to protect such components, for example, by implementing a secure interface (such as a firewall) to isolate the component from the threats that may be present in the greater network.
DetNet networks range in size from very small, e.g., inside a single industrial machine, to very large, e.g., a Utility Grid network spanning a whole country.
The size of the network might be related to how the attack is introduced into the network. For example, if the entire network is local, there is a threat that power can be cut to the entire network. If the network is large, perhaps only a part of the network is attacked.
A Delay attack might be as relevant to a small network as to a large network, although the amount of delay might be different.
Attacks sourced from IT traffic might be more likely in large networks since more people might have access to the network, presenting a larger attack surface. Similarly, Path Manipulation, Path Choice, and Time-Synchronization attacks seem more likely relevant to large networks.
Large DetNet networks (e.g., a Utility Grid network) may involve many "hops" over various kinds of links, for example, radio repeaters, microwave links, fiber optic links, etc.
An attacker who has knowledge of the operation of a component or device's internal software (such as "device drivers") may be able to take advantage of this knowledge to design an attack that could exploit flaws (or even the specifics of normal operation) in the communication between the various links.
It is also possible that a large-scale DetNet topology containing various kinds of links may not be in as common use as other more homogeneous topologies. This situation may present more opportunity for attackers to exploit software and/or protocol flaws in or between these components because these components or configurations may not have been sufficiently tested for interoperability (in the way they would be as a result of broad usage). This may be of particular concern to early adopters of new DetNet components or technologies.
Of the attacks we have defined, the ones identified in
Section 8.1.14 as germane to large networks are the most relevant.
A DetNet is expected to provide means to configure the network that include querying network path latency, requesting bounded latency for a given DetNet flow, requesting worst-case maximum and/or minimum latency for a given path or DetNet flow, and so on. It is an expected case that the network cannot provide a given requested service level. In such cases, the network control system should reply that the requested service level is not available (as opposed to accepting the parameter but then not delivering the desired behavior).
Controller plane attacks such as Signaling Packet Modification and Injection could be used to modify or create control traffic that could interfere with the process of a user requesting a level of service and/or the reply from the network.
Reconnaissance could be used to characterize flows and perhaps target specific flows for attack via the controller plane as noted in
Section 6.7.
DetNet provides the expectation of guaranteed bounded latency.
Delay attacks can cause packets to miss their agreed-upon latency boundaries.
Time-Synchronization attacks can corrupt the time reference of the system, resulting in missed latency deadlines (with respect to the "correct" time reference).
Applications may require "extremely low latency"; however, depending on the application, these may mean very different latency values. For example, "low latency" across a Utility Grid network is on a different time scale than "low latency" in a motor control loop in a small machine. The intent is that the mechanisms for specifying desired latency include wide ranges, and that architecturally there is nothing to prevent arbitrarily low latencies from being implemented in a given network.
Attacks on the controller plane (as described in the Level of Service theme; see
Section 8.1.16) and Delay and Time attacks (as described in the Bounded Latency theme; see
Section 8.1.17) both apply here.
DetNet is expected to provide bounded jitter (packet-to-packet latency variation).
Delay attacks can cause packets to vary in their arrival times, resulting in packet-to-packet latency variation, thereby violating the jitter specification.
Some applications would like to specify that the transit delay time values be equal for both the transmit and return paths.
Delay attacks can cause path delays to materially differ between paths.
Time-Synchronization attacks can corrupt the time reference of the system, resulting in path delays that may be perceived to be different (with respect to the "correct" time reference) even if they are not materially different.
DetNet-based systems are expected to be implemented with essentially arbitrarily high availability (for example, 99.9999% up time, or even 12 nines). The intent is that the DetNet designs should not make any assumptions about the level of reliability and availability that may be required of a given system and should define parameters for communicating these kinds of metrics within the network.
Any attack on the system, of any type, can affect its overall reliability and availability; thus, in the mapping table (
Table 5), we have marked every attack. Since every DetNet depends to a greater or lesser degree on reliability and availability, this essentially means that all networks have to mitigate all attacks, which to a greater or lesser degree defeats the purpose of associating attacks with use cases. It also underscores the difficulty of designing "extremely high reliability" networks.
In practice, network designers can adopt a risk-based approach in which only those attacks are mitigated whose potential cost is higher than the cost of mitigation.
This document expects that each DetNet system will be implemented to some essentially arbitrary level of reliability and/or availability, depending on the use case. A strategy used by DetNet for providing extraordinarily high levels of reliability when justified is to provide redundant paths between which traffic can be seamlessly switched, all the while maintaining the required performance of that system.
Replication-related attacks are by definition applicable here. Controller plane attacks can also interfere with the configuration of redundant paths.
If any of the security mechanisms that protect the DetNet are attacked or subverted, this can result in malfunction of the network. Thus, the security systems themselves need to be robust against attacks.
The general topic of protection of security mechanisms is not unique to DetNet; it is identical to the case of securing any security mechanism for any network. This document addresses these concerns only to the extent that they are unique to DetNet.
The List of Attacks table (
Table 4) lists the attacks described in
Section 5, [
Security Threats], assigning a number to each type of attack. That number is then used as a short form identifier for the attack in
Table 5, Mapping between Themes and Attacks.
|
Attack |
1 |
Delay Attack |
2 |
DetNet Flow Modification or Spoofing |
3 |
Inter-segment Attack |
4 |
Replication: Increased Attack Surface |
5 |
Replication-Related Header Manipulation |
6 |
Path Manipulation |
7 |
Path Choice: Increased Attack Surface |
8 |
Control or Signaling Packet Modification |
9 |
Control or Signaling Packet Injection |
10 |
Reconnaissance |
11 |
Attacks on Time-Synchronization Mechanisms |
Table 4: List of Attacks
The Mapping between Themes and Attacks table (
Table 5) maps the use case themes of [
RFC 8578] (as also enumerated in this document) to the attacks of
Table 4. Each row specifies a theme, and the attacks relevant to this theme are marked with a "+". The row items that have no threats associated with them are included in the table for completeness of the list of Use Case Common Themes and do not have DetNet-specific threats associated with them.
Theme |
Attack |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
Network Layer - AVB/TSN Eth. |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
Central Administration |
|
|
|
|
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
Hot Swap |
|
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
+ |
Data Flow Information Models |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
L2 and L3 Integration |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
End-to-End Delivery |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
|
Proprietary Deterministic Ethernet Networks |
|
|
+ |
|
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
Replacement for Proprietary Fieldbuses |
|
|
+ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Deterministic vs. Best-Effort Traffic |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
|
|
|
Deterministic Flows |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
|
|
|
Unused Reserved Bandwidth |
|
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
|
+ |
+ |
|
|
Interoperability |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cost Reductions |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Insufficiently Secure Components |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
DetNet Network Size |
+ |
|
|
|
|
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
+ |
Multiple Hops |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
+ |
Level of Service |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Bounded Latency |
+ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
+ |
Low Latency |
+ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
Bounded Jitter |
+ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Symmetric Path Delays |
+ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
+ |
Reliability and Availability |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
Redundant Paths |
|
|
|
+ |
+ |
|
|
+ |
+ |
|
|
Security Measures |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Table 5: Mapping between Themes and Attacks