Embedded Architecture for Cyber-resilience (EAC)

Cyber physical systems are employed widely in Navy operations. As these systems become more interconnected, they become more exposed to cyber-attacks. Traditional fault tolerance techniques that use redundant hardware and software are designed for physical and random failures that are unintentional; they are far less effective against intentional attacks that target all redundant components. Therefore, cyber physical system operators need a resilient system-level architecture that can detect and isolate compromised software components and restore functionality, all while continuing to meet real-time service requirements.Given our successful evaluation of our feasibility prototype in Phase I, we propose to design, develop, and evaluate a full-scope Embedded Architecture for Cyber-resilience (EAC) to protect cyber physical systems from threats. Our framework extends the Composite operating system developed by team member, George Washington University. EAC ensures fine-grained isolation of both system- and application-level components and uses novel anomaly detection algorithms to detect and locate compromises. When a component is compromised, EAC automatically restores that component to a known good state. EAC uniquely combines a component-based operating system structure with novel system monitoring and fault detection algorithms to provide attack and fault resiliency for cyber physical systems.