Security Analysis of OPC UA in Automation Systems for IIoT

Abstract: Establishing secured communication among the different entities in an industrial environment is a major concern. Especially with the introduction of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), industries have been susceptible to cyber threats, which makes security a critical requirement for the industries. Prevailing industrial communication standards were proven to meet the security needs to some extent, but the major issue which was yet to be addressed was interoperability. To achieve interoperability, Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA) was introduced as a communication protocol. OPC UA helped bridge the gap between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) security needs, but this also gives rise to new attack opportunities for the intruder. In this thesis, we have analysed the security challenges in OPC UA and the impact of two different cyberattacks on the OPCUA. First, we have implemented an OPC UA Network with the help of Raspberry Pis and open62541, an open-source implementation of the OPC UA client and server. Following this, to evaluate the performance of the network, we performed three cybersecurity attacks, Packet Sniffing, Man in the Middle Attack (MITM) and Denial of Service attack. We assessed the impact these attacks have on the OPC UA network. We have also discussed the detection mechanism for the same attacks. This analysis has helped us recognize the threats faced by OPC UA in an IIoT environment with respect to message flooding, packet sniffing and man in the middle attack and the countermeasures to this attack have been discussed.