This document discusses robotics security, including vulnerabilities, attacks, and recommendations. It covers how robots are increasingly being used in fields like agriculture, medicine, industry, disasters, the military, and law enforcement. However, it notes that security issues have arisen as robots can now be maliciously hacked and used to cause injuries or economic losses. The document reviews key security threats and attacks facing robotics. It recommends approaches like multi-factor authentication and encryption to enhance robotic system security.
This document discusses robotics security, including vulnerabilities, attacks, and recommendations. It covers how robots are increasingly being used in fields like agriculture, medicine, industry, disasters, the military, and law enforcement. However, it notes that security issues have arisen as robots can now be maliciously hacked and used to cause injuries or economic losses. The document reviews key security threats and attacks facing robotics. It recommends approaches like multi-factor authentication and encryption to enhance robotic system security.
This document discusses robotics security, including vulnerabilities, attacks, and recommendations. It covers how robots are increasingly being used in fields like agriculture, medicine, industry, disasters, the military, and law enforcement. However, it notes that security issues have arisen as robots can now be maliciously hacked and used to cause injuries or economic losses. The document reviews key security threats and attacks facing robotics. It recommends approaches like multi-factor authentication and encryption to enhance robotic system security.
The recent digital revolution led robots to Security attacks · Countermeasures · Risk become integrated more than ever into analysis · Counter-terrorism/insurgency · different domains such as agricultural, Robotics against COVID-19 medical, industrial, military, police (law enforcement), and logistics. Robots are 1 Introduction devoted to serve, facilitate, and enhance the human life. However, many incidents With the latest digital revolution and the have been occurring, leading to serious heavy reliance on Artificial Intelligence injuries and devastating impacts such as (AI), smart robots are being employed to the unnecessary loss of human lives. speed up the transformation of digital Unintended accidents will always take operations. In this context, the market of place, but the ones caused by malicious intelligent machines, including attacks represent a very challenging issue. autonomous robots, is exponentially This includes maliciously hijacking and growing; more than 40 million robots were controlling robots and causing serious reportedly sold between 2016 and 2019. Robotics is one of those technologies that economic and financial losses. This paper are witnessing tremendous expansion and reviews the main security vulnerabilities, threats, risks, and their impacts, and the growth especially with the rise of the main security attacks within the robotics ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, domain. In this context, different its emergence into the Internet of Things approaches and recommendations are (IoT) domain led it to be called the Internet presented in order to enhance and improve of Robotic Things. In fact, robots play a the security level of robotic systems such crucial role in modern societies, offering as multi-factor device/user authentication various opportunities to help in various schemes, in addition to multi-factor domains, including civilian and military cryptographic algorithms. We also review sectors, as well as agricultural, industrial, and medical ones. However, there are the recently presented security solutions several concerns related to robots’ for robotic systems. deployment in critical infrastructures (e.g., industrial, medical, etc.). These concerns are mainly related to security, safety, accuracy and trust. Security is primarily use of robots in industrial, medical, related to the level of protection of these disaster and agriculture fields, in addition robots against different types of cyber- to police and military one. attacks. Safety is related to the reduction of (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) the likelihood of accidents’ occurrence(s), accuracy is based on performing the 2.1 Industrial field intended task without any faults/mistakes, Industrial robots are mainly used in order while trust is based on the level of to reduce manpower. Robots have become satisfaction and capability of these robots artificially smart and able to perform jobs to accurately perform and replace humans faster, safer, and with higher efficiency. in certain fields and activities. However, Such jobs include manufacturing, various security concerns, issues, construction, transportation, and quality vulnerabilities, and threats are constantly control. In particular, robots are being used arising, including the malicious misuse of in hazardous locations to perform these robots via cyber-attacks, which may dangerous tasks. They are also capable of result in serious injuries and even death. performing repetitive tasks with the same precision and accuracy, better than their 2 Robot application human counterpart. (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) domains Robots have been deployed in different domains and employed in different fields, 2.2 Medical field including civilian and military ones, which Robots have been deployed in the medical are illustrates the various robotic usages in domain to be used in tele-medicine, virtual different fields of operations for many care, and remote treatment concepts. In tasks and purposes such as photography, fact, they were designed to serve as product delivery, agriculture, wildlife medical robots, surgical robots, and monitoring, policing, search and rescue, hospital robots. They are used to perform emergency response, crisis/disaster small surgeries accurately, and new response, casualty evacuation, medical robots are capable of performing reconnaissance and surveillance, Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR). counterterrorism/insurgency, counter- (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) IEDs/unexploded ordnance, border patrol, infrastructure inspections, and science. 2.3 Agriculture field There are different types of robots Robots are used in agriculture due to their depending on their field of operation: efficient and increased performance in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) such reducing manpower and resource as drones, Autonomous Unmanned consumption. They are used to perform Aircraft Vehicles (AUAVs), Unmanned some tasks efficiently, especially when Aerial Combat Vehicles (UACVs) and dealing with a large farming area that Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) requires at least a dozen of workers and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) such several days. This enhances irrigation, as robots and autonomous vehicles, and crop testing, crop agriculture, and so on. Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) such as underwater drones, Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV), Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles (ROUVs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). This section discusses the main 2.4 Disaster field “Skunk” drones which are armed and Disaster robots can be used to reach and equipped with pepper spray. The American find helpless people who were isolated by police and law enforcement are also using floods, or stuck and lost somewhere. “weaponized drones” armed with tasers, Disaster robots can perform jobs and reach tear gas, and rubber bullets. places that humans cannot. Their famous (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) use was when Search and Rescue (SAR) robots were deployed to locate and find 2.6 Military field lost Thai cave boys safely. Moreover, Military robots became the latest adopted robots were used in the firefighting weapons to be used in most of military domain, which helps in sparing the lives of operations, especially with the extensive firefighters and to access areas that are use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) deemed too dangerous, too small, and/or to perform target detection and to launch too risky for firefighters. In fact, both airstrikes. Moreover, robots were used to robots and UAVs were used after the counter the Improvised Explosive Device devastating Beirut port explosion that (IED) threat, especially in Iraq and occurred at around 6:07 pm on August 4th, Afghanistan. In fact, they were being used 2020, to help with assessing the damage by the British army in Northern Ireland and impact radius, as well as in the search since 1970s, to combat the IEDs threat for missing personnel. The explosion was imposed by the Irish Republican Army caused by the alleged detonation of 2750 (IRA) and its different factions and issues. tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate due to lack (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) of proper storage, equivalent to 1.1 kilotons of Trinitrotoluene (TNT), and is considered as one of the most powerful 3 Robotics security: issues, non-nuclear explosions in history. vulnerabilities, threats, and (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) risks Despite the great advantages and 2.5 Police and law promising future, the robotic field holds, enforcement field some major concerns are still lurking around, and imposing serious threats and Robots are being deployed in various police fields, especially when it comes to issues that can potentially affect both shooting down, neutralizing, or humans and machines. For this reason, eliminating suspects in places that are these main issues and challenges are considered too dangerous and that could presented in this section. lead to the loss of valuable officers’ lives. (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) A well-known use case of this application is when the police used a robot strapped 3.1 Security issues with a C4 explosive and detonated it in Robotic issues are not limited to one, but order to kill the Dallas shooter. In fact, the to many aspects that could exploit any Israeli police is known to have used drones vulnerability/security gap to target robotic (i.e., spiderman urban assault drone), with systems and applications alike. The aim is others equipped with tear gas to counter to identify and classify them to gain a the Gaza protests and to reduce the threat better insight, which helps other fellow imposed by possibly armed infiltrators and researchers in their quest to identify, tackle burning/armed explosive incendiary kites and overcome them and balloons. Indian, South African, and • Lack of secure networking which renders Dutch police are also known to have used the communication between robots/machines and humans insecure and disruptions and can reconfigure the backup prone to various attacks. resources. •Lack of proper authentication which leads •Lack of safety designs is very risky and to an unauthorized access using standard has proven in many real-case incidents to usernames and passwords, which can be be lethal and threatening towards humans easily trespassed by a given attacker. with a remarkable number of casualties •Lack of confidentiality which is due to the and fatalities, aside the economic/financial use of weak encryption algorithms that can losses. be easily broken, leading to the •Lack of security by-design features leads interception and exposure of robotic to breaking into the robotic system’s sensitive data and design plans. architecture and design to scan and exploit •Lack of privacy can result in the exposure its vulnerability/security gap(s) for further of business deals and trades that can affect attacks, including malicious data injection the reputation of a given organization, and and modification. the exposure of the collaboration between •Lack of AI-based designs affects the different robotic security firms. operational and functional performance of •Lack of integrity which is due to the use robots when being assigned a task, with of weak message authentication protocols both accuracy and performance being that can be easily compromised, leading to affected. the alteration of robotic sensitive data, •Lack of update for the robotic operating stored or in transit. system, firmware, •Lack of verification which does not and software may result in various cyber- include strong biometric features to physical attacks. prevent any abuse of privilege or •Lack of advanced IDS solutions is also a unauthorized access. major issue, especially when relying on •Lack of authorization it defines the right intrusion detection system that either physical access based on the assigned detect anomaly, behaviour or signature access controls inside robotic labs, pattern of a given malware, rather than factories, and industries. relying on advanced hybrid and •Misconfiguration and bad programming lightweight or AI-based IDS solutions. which may render the robotic systems and The same is true for the use of Honeypots. operating systems incapable of performing •Lack of penetration testing could lead to the intended tasks at the required accuracy security breaches of the deployed level, and thus, threatening their human applications. operators and badly affecting the software •Lack of security patches increases the features. chance of basic and advanced attacks such •Lack of tamper-resistant hardware renders as stealing of sensitive data, remote access, robots prone to damage and/or partial/total and rootkit. destruction, which can lead to the loss of •Lack of personnel training is also a the robot’s functional and operational serious issue since personnel working in capabilities. the coding robotic domain, or as human •Lack of self-healing processing leaves the operators, or as IT or chief executives, are robotic system prone to the possibly of targeted by social engineering, reverse cascading attacks with the inability to engineering and phishing attacks. recover or react in time to prevent further •Lack of human–machine collaboration degradation in its performance. Hence, a could affect the human activity in terms of self-healing process is required to ensure labour, work, and performance. that robotic systems can sense faults or •Lack of employee screening could result •Heterogeneity and homogeneity in having an insider attack led by a vulnerability the heterogeneous nature of whistle-blower that leaks sensitive data robotic systems makes their integration and exposes classified information and prone to many security issues. Moreover, sensitive robotic details. their homogeneous nature also leaves them (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) prone to similar attacks with possibly cascading effects. •Management vulnerability includes the 3.2 Security vulnerabilities lack of advised planning, security Robotic systems are prone to various guidelines, procedures and policies. vulnerabilities that can affect their (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) performance in terms of connectivity, productivity, operations, and accuracy. This paper presents several vulnerabilities 3.3 Security threats that are challenging: Robotics threats are growing, not only due •Network vulnerability with the lack or the to the concept of industrial competition, adoption of basic security measures, but also due spying and terrorism. robotic systems are vulnerable to various (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) wired/wireless communication and connections attacks including replay, man- 3.3.1 Threat source in-the-middle, eavesdropping, sniffing, Threats can originate from different spoofing, etc. sources, and can be part of cyber-crimes, •Platform vulnerability includes the lack of cyber-warfare, cyber-espionage, or even constant updates of software and firmware cyber-terrorism. This paper lists the main patches, as well as security patches to ones as follows: maintain a secure up-to-date robotic •Insiders (or whistle-blowers) are usually system. This results into also having rogue or unsatisfied employees who aim to configuration and database vulnerabilities. either steal robotic confidential •Application vulnerability applications that information, or infiltrators that help are not tested and evaluated for coding or outsiders to conduct their attack remotely compatibility bugs, can also affect the through abuse of privilege. Insiders can robotic system’s performance. Hence, also cause physical damage and further testing is essentially required. destruction to robotic systems. •Security vulnerability the adoption of new •Outsiders aim to gain access to a robotic security measures without thorough testing system through the Internet. The external can sometimes affect the performance of adversary’s aim is to get access to both robotic systems and devices. Hence, information for malicious purposes, to testing is essential before deployment. cause malfunction or/and disrupt the •Bad practice vulnerability includes the system’s services through the injection of bad choice of security measures and either fake or malicious data. means, as well as lack of coding skills, •Competitors usually, rivals in the robotic which can be easily re-modified to cause industry aim to maintain a leading edge in errors or to perform the wrong tasks. this domain. Many methods can be •Update vulnerability robots are also prone adopted such as the reliance on insiders, or to update vulnerabilities that can cause part of industrial espionage to leak their systems and operating systems to act confidential documents and damage the differently due to the new update, rival company’s reputation including the loss of unsaved data, •Incompetent developers include bad interruption of the ongoing process, etc. manufacturers and programmers who do not take into consideration the essential •Spies are constantly being used to safety and security requirements upon the conduct (cyber) espionage and sabotage development of software for robots and operations, typically between rival machines. countries such as Iranian-Israeli cold •Incompetent operators include either cyber-war, which reached its height in ignorant users who do not know how to May 2020, including cyber-attacks and use well a robot or a machine, or malicious sabotage operations. A prime example is users who try to use the robot/machine for the “Quicksand” operation led by Iran’s a malicious task. “Muddy Water” and Cyber “Avengers” •Cyber criminals including hackers whose that are linked to the Islamic aim is put their cyber-attack capabilities Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into action via scanning for security gaps targeting Israel’s industrial infrastructure, or software/firmware vulnerability and followed by a series of ongoing Israeli exploiting them. counter-cyber-offensives, which reached •Organized criminals unlike cyber their height in June, targeting Iran’s criminals, they break into a given company infrastructure ports, electricity firms, and steal robotic components, parts, covert nuclear labs, etc. In fact, the Iranian designs, or architecture plan in order to sell cyber-threat is growing with many it into the black market to rival companies, Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors or for their own personal gains. attacking Western targets such as: APT33 •Malicious manufacturers leave, on targeting aerospace and (petrochemical) purpose, a backdoor into the robotic energy, APT34 involving a long-term system to track and monitor the activities cyber espionage operation targeting of the robot and its operator without the financial, government, energy, chemical owner’s knowledge. Also, they can gather firms, APT35 (or Newscaster Team) sensitive and confidential information targeting military, governmental, media about the user’s device through key and engineering firms, and APT39 logging and root-kits. In fact, many targeting telecommunications sector and manufacturers leave on purpose a design high-tech industry. flaw or a misconfiguration as a backdoor (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) in order to exploit it or to get quick access to the robotic system. 3.3.2 Threat nature •State-sponsored hackers are usually Despite the already listed issues, there are recruited as a nation’s cyber-army to various threats targeting Industrial IoT perform defensive and offensive tasks to systems that need to be addressed before achieve political influence and gain. This diving further into the security aspect of can include hijacking military robots, the robotic domain. These main threats are leaking sensitive and confidential classified as follows: documents about lethal robot designs, or •Wireless jamming robotic declassifying robotic documents and communications are prone to various experiments. availability attacks that can jam, disrupt •Terrorists also rely, in this domain, in the or/and interrupt its connection via either physical and cyber-world. Terrorists use de-authentication or jamming. This leads robots and drones in their paramilitary to the complete or partial loss of operations. Also, cyber-terrorism is controlling the robot growing to retrieve details and gain •Reconnaissance and scanning robotic insights about robotic systems to build systems are also prone to various their own versions. reconnaissance and scanning attacks that aim to evaluate their level of protection, robotic systems, or via launching a the employed software, hardware, and (distributed) denial of service attack. operating systems, to search for a security •Sabotage and espionage robotic systems vulnerability or gap that may be exploited are typically prone to industrial espionage in future attacks. operations, which can be further extended •Information disclosure can take place to become a sabotage operation resulting either via physical leaking of confidential into hijacking, destroying or severely documents, or remotely via a cyber-attack. crippling the ability of robotic systems to Targeting both privacy and confidentiality properly perform their intended task(s). of robotic manufacturers, businesses and This can also be classified as an act of industries. terrorism. •Abuse of privilege still remains a threat in •Tracking and monitoring several robotic the robotic domain whereby unauthorized applications may include covert tracking users trespass physical and logical access systems that can monitor and track the controls to gain an unauthorized access or robotic operators without their knowledge perform unauthorized tasks. (i.e., iRobot cleaner), all by secretly •Information gathering remains an collecting information about them essential threat, especially with personnel including personal details, devices in use, working in the robotic domain (operators, geographical locations, etc. In fact, threats manufacturers, IT security, Chief Robotics also target the security goals that surround Officers (CROs), etc.) lacking the right traditional and advanced Industrial Control security training to overcome phishing and Systems (ICSs), as well as the Cloud social engineering attempts. Computing (CC) domain associated with •Information interception operating on the robotic field different high frequencies allows •Confidentiality threats these include, in manufacturers to communicate without addition to the use of malware, passive interference. However, the lack of security traffic analysis (i.e., eavesdropping), protection and encryption over these sensitive data theft, malicious code channels leave them prone to various injection (i.e., XSS or SQLi), exposure of interception and delay attacks, which can sensitive information, side channel attacks, result in a total breach of privacy, dumpster diving, and the adoption of confidentiality and integrity. social engineering or phishing techniques. •Information modification is a common •Integrity threats include active traffic threat that targets the AI aspect of robotics, analysis (i.e., man/meet-in-the-middle), with malicious modifications affecting the snooping, spoofing, data/information ability of AI to distinguish between modification, malicious data or malware pictures, for example, the accuracy of injection, false data injection, performing the intended tasks. physical/logical compromise of robotic •Physical damage robots are also prone to devices, back-doors, rootkits and elevation physical damage, attack and theft by of privilege. insiders (rogue employees) and intruders. •Availability threats include service-data This is mainly due to the lack of available theft, service denial/disruption, security checks and tamper-resistant disruption/interruption of network equipment. communications, exhaustion of resources •Service disruption or denial can be caused and buffer overflow (i.e., Central either by an employee’s mistake or by Processing Unit (CPU), memory, battery malicious users who inject malicious data consumption), jamming, malware types affecting the accuracy and performance of (i.e., Trojans, Botnets, etc.), physical damage to various equipment including routers and switches, replay attacks, and malicious users to disconnect legitimate selective forwarding, as well as wormhole, owners and re-control them (i.e., robots blackhole and sinkhole attacks. and drones). •Authentication threats include malicious •Fake applications many robotic third-party applications and services, applications are develop by third party social engineering and phishing vendors, some of which are fake techniques, abuse of privilege, key-stroke applications masqueraded as legitimate register, stealing sensitive documents, lack apps. Such apps include various malware of proper (logical/physical) access types attached to them such as controls, deployment of dummy/fake ransomware, backdoor, spyware, botnet, nodes, and spoofing worm, Trojan, and ransomware and can target the privacy, availability and 3.4 Security risks authentication of robotic users. The rise of various robotic security and •Insecure backup and data storage lack of cyber-security issues, threats and proper and verified storage of data can vulnerabilities, in addition to their negative lead to data loss or corruption. In fact, effects are presented as follows: without proper data storage, any attack •Security and system flaw these risks (i.e., ransomware) can cripple the ability of affect the normal processing and industrial organizations to safely operate, performance of industrial robots, and could which may also affect the performance of disrupt the production and industrial the robotic systems and devices alike. processes, leading to financial losses. • System failure robotic systems, in case of More precisely, they could result in a cyber- events (i.e., attack or system blockage, data interception, malfunctioning), are prone to various extraction, and physical damage. issues including major and cascading •Back-doors ill-configured robotic system failures, loss of power, and lack of applications or applications with third- operational availability. party access led to various backdoor and •Battery constraints some robotic devices rootkit attacks. This would expose robotic are resource constrained and as such, they users by targeting their privacy first, and are prone to excessive battery then by keeping them under constant consumption, battery power draining, surveillance, monitoring, and tracking, battery life expectancy, and resource- with possibility of registering keystrokes exhaustion. and capturing snapshots or even videos •Inaccurate activity threshold the lack of without their knowledge. available robotic activity threshold risks •Remote-access insecure and open having robots performing abnormal and wireless communications and deviating activities without them being communication ports, as well as unused detected. This might affect both ones if not closed, could lead to operational and functional safety and interception whereby attackers use them to security procedures that may endanger the gain remote access to a given robotic life of their human operators. system, to launch their cyber-attack, • Obstacle testing robots that are not tested especially, robots relying on vulnerable in their field of deployment are prone to Lora WAN communications. various software/hardware and operating •Device theft robotic devices are also system issues. This may lead to system prone to physical theft or hijacking and and hardware failures, disabling the control, a prime example is the de- robotic system, and bringing its production authentication process that allows to a total halt, which is associated with financial losses. • Authentication threats include malicious •Fake applications many robotic third-party applications and services, applications are developed by third party social engineering and phishing vendors, some of which are fake techniques, abuse of privilege, key-stroke applications masqueraded as legitimate register, stealing sensitive documents, lack apps. Such apps include various malware of proper (logical/physical) access types attached to them such as controls, deployment of dummy/fake ransomware, backdoor, spyware, botnet, nodes, and spoofing. worm, Trojan, and ransomware and can (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) target the privacy, availability and authentication of robotic users. the rise of various robotic security and •Insecure backup and data storage lack of cyber-security issues, threats and proper and verified storage of data can vulnerabilities, in addition to their negative lead to data loss or corruption. In fact, effects are presented as follows: without proper data storage, any attack •Security and system flaw these risks (i.e., ransomware) can cripple the ability of affect the normal processing and industrial organizations to safely operate, performance of industrial robots, and could which may also affect the performance of disrupt the production and industrial the robotic systems and devices alike. processes, leading to financial losses. •System failure robotic systems, in case of More precisely, they could result in a cyber-events (i.e., attack or system blockage, data interception, malfunctioning), are prone to various extraction, and physical damage. issues including major and cascading •Back-doors ill-configured robotic system failures, loss of power, and lack of applications or applications with third- operational availability. party access led to various backdoor and •Battery constraints some robotic devices rootkit attacks. This would expose robotic are resource constrained and as such, they users by targeting their privacy first, and are prone to excessive battery then by keeping them under constant consumption, battery power draining, surveillance, monitoring, and tracking, battery life expectancy, and resource- with possibility of registering keystrokes exhaustion. and capturing snapshots or even videos •Inaccurate activity threshold the lack of without their knowledge available robotic activity threshold risks •Remote-access insecure and open having robots performing abnormal and wireless communications and deviating activities without them being communication ports, as well as unused detected. This might affect both ones if not closed, could lead to operational and functional safety and interception whereby attackers use them to security procedures that may endanger the gain remote access to a given robotic life of their human operators. system to launch their cyber-attack, •Obstacle testing robots that are not tested especially, robots relying on vulnerable in their field of deployment are prone to Lora WAN communications. various software/hardware and operating •Device theft robotic devices are also system issues. This may lead to system prone to physical theft or hijacking and and hardware failures, disabling the control, a prime example is the de- robotic system, and bringing its production authentication process that allows to a total halt, which is associated with malicious users to disconnect legitimate financial losses. owners and re-control them (i.e., robots •Non-backed communication can lead to and drones) the interception or loss of communication between the robotic system and its operator(s), which in turn, leads to loss of 4 Robotic security attacks control. This occurs especially when the There are various increasing attacks that device goes beyond the (visual) line-of- are specifically targeting robotic systems, sight. Hence, further work needs to be especially after their integration in invested in this domain. domains such as Industrial IoT, Medical •Supply-chain disruption the disruption of IoT and Battlefield IoT. This resulted into semi- or fully automated supply chain various attacks being conducted targeting systems may lead to drastic financial both robotics data and systems’ security losses, significant time-to-repair, in including confidentiality, integrity, addition to risking the availability of availability, authentication and privacy. robotic services and activities. This section will present and discuss the •Nature’s disruption without a backup plan main attacks that target the robotic field. to mitigate the threats imposed by natural (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) disasters such as earthquakes, flooding, and so on, the operational services of robotic systems may come to a total halt, leading to high financial and economic losses related to the damage and destruction of hardware and software equipment, in addition to the loss of data. •Data transmission quality the diversity of mitigation techniques deployed to protect robotic systems may affect the robotics’ performance and data transmission quality.
(Yaacoub, 19 March 2021)
4.1 Robotic attacks: taxonomies required tasks, these software programs are and classification vulnerable to application attacks, rendering The aim of this subsection is to identify the application itself prone to various types and classify these attacks which target both of attacks. This includes malware that robots and robotic systems. Moreover, the including viruses, worms, software attack impact is also highlighted and Trojans attacks, in addition to buffer discussed. For this reason, presented to overflow and malicious code injection summarize the main robot related cyber- attacks. In the following, a set of these attacks, their structure and impact, along possible software attacks are described. their cause and concerns. Lastly, the main •Worm attacks aim to target the robotic risk assessment solutions are presented and systems by exploiting the vulnerabilities of analysed in order to ensure a quicker their network’s connected devices before assessment of cyber risks, threats, self-propagation and self-replicating to vulnerabilities and attacks, followed by a infect other robotic devices, and target qualitative risk assessment table being industrial control systems. A prime proposed. example of that is the famous Stuxnet (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) attack including its Stuxnet 2.0 and Stuxnet Secret Twin Variant. This also included Flame, Gauss and Grayfish, 4.1.1 Attacks on the robot hardware Duqu, and Duqu 2.0, which were initially These attacks can vary from least designed by the joint US and Israel’s dangerous (e.g., phishing) to the most signal intelligence (SIGINT) National Unit dangerous ones (e.g., hardware Trojans). (ISNU), Unit 8200 as part of “Operation Such attacks can lead to the Olympics” to target Iran’s nuclear program implementation of back-doors for the assets. attacker to lead another attack by gaining •Ransomware attacks aim to encrypt all unauthorized access to the robots being the data linked to robotic systems, devices used, or during their maintenance. In some and applications, as well as locking the cases, they can even have a full access to backed-up data while preventing legitimate the hardware. Furthermore, robots are users from re-accessing them without prone to implementation attacks such as conducting a Bitcoin payment. Hence, the side channel attacks or fault attacks that term of “Crypto ware”, targeting robotic could possibly lead to sensitive data loss or systems and data confidentiality, integrity, system exploitation (depending on the availability, authentication and privacy. attacker’s target(s)). •Botnet attacks are usually employed as (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) bots to conduct D-DoS attacks against medical and industrial robotic systems. 4.1.2 Attacks on the robot’s firmware Botnets can be based on malicious codes The Operating System (OS) upgrades are used to infect unprotected robotic devices. achieved via internet connection, due to Botnets can also be linked to worms, the presence of firmware codes that are ransomware and Trojans which allow them usually stored on a flash memory. to conduct attacks against robotic systems However, with each upgrade, the OS might and data’s privacy, confidentiality and be vulnerable to new types of attacks. integrity. This includes, a variety of According to, the OS is prone to DoS and botnets such as Storm (2007), Cutwail DDoS attacks, along with the arbitrary (2007), Grum (2008), Kraken (2008), code execution, and root-kit attacks. On Mariposa (2008), Methbot (2016), Mirai the other hand, since applications rely on (2016), and Glupteba (2019). This type of running software programs to perform the malware can affect the confidentiality, •Traffic analysis attacks since robotic integrity, availability, authentication of systems are still relying on open wireless data and robots. communications or communications with basic security measures, traffic analysis
(Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) attacks can occur in a much more frequent
manner. This includes listening to the 4.2 Attacks on the robots ongoing traffic between the robots and their robot controllers, and retrieve vital communications information without being detected. This Robotic communications are also prone to mainly affects the privacy and different attacks that might affect different confidentiality of both robotic systems and security services (i.e., authentication, data, and can lead to further future attacks. confidentiality, and integrity), as stated in (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) the following. •Jamming attacks aim to interrupt and 4.3 Robotic attacks: impact and disrupt the robot-to robot and robot-to- concerns humans communication with the aim to The increasing number of attacks against suspend further robotic activities and jam robots and robotic systems has led to an any sort of communication and control. increase in number of concerns. This has Thus, targeting both systems and data raised many concerns surrounding this availability. field along questioning the ability of •De-authentication attacks aim to effectively deploying in various domains temporarily, periodically or disable the and areas of operation. robotic devices from being able to connect •On national security the use of robots and back to their initial operator, disrupting the robotics in domestic crimes and domestic communication between them and the terrorism has increased recently, not only robotic devices and possibly preventing through their use in the cyber field, but them from re-connecting back and also in the physical field too. Robots can hijacking the robot by gaining control. be re-modified to carry lethal weapons or This aims to target the availability, can be re-programmed to perform an authentication and integrity of both data excessive use force which can lead to both and systems. human and material losses. In fact, without TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE a proper programming that ensures a safer (TECHINT) and intelligence gathered and much more secure deployment and use from the dark web (silk road). This allows of robots in police and law enforcement an enhancement in the robotic domain via fields, robots may end up in a blue-on-blue an evidence-based malware analysis. engagement which may result in friendly (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) fire, or engaging the wrong targets including civilians. 6 Security requirements, (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) recommendations, and future research directions 5 Securing robotics: presented Based on the reviewed works, we found solutions and effective that various security requirements are still countermeasures needed to be studied, conducted and It is essential to implement and maintain analysed to enhance the discussed security effective security countermeasures in order countermeasures and the recommendations to secure the robotics systems. Therefore, for future research directions. A very the need for a strong multi-factor limited number of presented work included authentication process, along with the managing the security aspect of robotics identification and verification processes during the design phase, and many focused (based on a strong access control policy on how to maintain the privacy and and robot fingerprints measures), in confidentiality through encryption without addition to multi-factor confidentiality, are taking into consideration the source highly recommended. This allows the authentication and data integrity part prevention of any malicious physical through the use of strong keyed hash and/or logical unauthorized access. In fact, mechanism (e.g. HMAC) or by using securing robots, robotics, and robot authentication operation mode such as operating systems is not an easy task. Cipher-based Message Authentication However, it is not also an impossible task Code (CMAC) and Galois Message either. Therefore, different cryptographic, Authentication Code (GMAC). non-cryptographic and AI-based solutions (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) were presented for this specific task. We highlight the various solutions presented 6.1 Security requirements by various authors and highlight their It is essential to ensure the security of advantages and drawbacks. robot’s wireless communication through (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) the implementation of various security mechanisms. This maintains secure 5.1 Cyber threat intelligence communication and ensures authentication, The Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) is integrity, confidentiality, and availability. based on the information gathered about (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) robotic threats and threat actors which would help in mitigating harmful cyber- 6.1.1 Adaptive security events based on the Advanced Persistent This paper found that it is important to Threat (APT) concept through early ensure and implement an active and detection and prevention. In fact, CTI adaptive security solution. This adaptive sources include information gathered from security solutions can be divided into two HUMAN INTELLIGENCE (HUMINT), main types, threat centred or data-centred Open-Source INTELLIGENCE (OSINT), to know what data to secure, and against References whom the data must be secured 1. Rüßmann, M., Lorenz, M., Gerbert, P., (Yaacoub, 19 March 2021) Waldner, M., Justus, J., Engel, P., Harnisch, M.: Industry 4.0: the future of 7 Conclusion productivity and growth in manufacturing Nowadays, robotic systems are being industries. Boston Consult. Group 9(1), deployed and used in different domains 54–89 (2015) that are based on critical infrastructures. 2. Bahrin, M.A.K., Othman, M.F., Nor However, robotic systems suffer from Azli, N.H., Talib, M.F.: Industry 4.0: a several security vulnerabilities that can be review on industrial automation and exploited to launch dangerous attacks, robotic. J. 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