Abstract:
Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are used to interconnect, monitor, and control processes in industrial environments such as power grid, chemical production, oil and gas, manufacturing, etc. In recent years, there have been increased security concerns for ICS due to various factors: attacks on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), adoption of open communication standards and protocols, connections to internet, and complex distributed network architectures. In this talk, our on-going efforts on real-time monitoring and vulnerability analysis for a benchmark chemical process and other applications are presented. The development of a Hardware-In-The-Loop (HITL) testbed for the benchmark Tennessee Eastman process (and other processes) with some of the control loops implemented on Wago and Siemens PLCs and demonstration of a cross-layer attack on the HITL testbed are also described. . Experimental results demonstrate that a carefully crafted attack on the PLC can deteriorate process quality and even destabilize the process causing shutdown or damaging of the process hardware. Finally, we demonstrate control theoretic and machine learning based defense mechanisms utilizing Support Vector Machines (SVM) and dynamical observers to learn the typical process behavior and detect the presented attacks. An overview of other ongoing research activities at CRRL will also be presented. These include control and autonomy applications for robotic and unmanned systems such as rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft, sea vehicles, and humanoids.

Bio:
Farshad Khorrami received his Bachelors degrees in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering in 1982 and 1984 respectively from The Ohio State University. He also received his Master's degree in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1984 and 1988 from The Ohio State University. Dr. Khorrami is currently a professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at NYU where he joined as an assistant professor in Sept. 1988. His research interests include robotics and automation, unmanned vehicles (fixed-wing and rotary wing aircrafts as well as underwater vehicles and surface ships), cyber security, adaptive and nonlinear controls, large-scale systems and decentralized control, smart grid, and microprocessor based control and instrumentation. Prof. Khorrami has published more than 240 refereed journal and conference papers in these areas. His book “Modeling and adaptive nonlinear control of electric motors” was published by Springer Verlag in 2003. He also has thirteen U.S. patents on novel smart micro-positioners and actuators, control systems, and wireless sensors and actuators. He has developed and directed the Control/Robotics Research Laboratory at Polytechnic University (now NYU). His research has been supported by the Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, DARPA, Sandia National Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory, NASA, and several corporations. Prof. Khorrami has served as general chair and conference organizing committee member of several international conferences.