Cyber-Resilient Architectures and Security (CRAS)
How secure is our networked world?
We are currently experiencing the digital transformation of our economy and society. This fundamental change is accompanied by extensive digitization and networking in all areas, creating a world in which the previous separation between off - and online no longer predominates. The physical world is merging with the digital world.
This presents many new opportunities and possibilities, but also an equal number of challenges and risks.
ICT security in particular can no longer rely solely on established models and solution strategies. The trinity of privacy, integrity, and availability as the fundamental base of IT-Security must be reconsidered and revised to fit the new global cyberworld. In the networked world, previously self-suffi cient systems have suddenly become elements of a global "system of systems". The fusion of heterogeneous application systems increases the number of targets for cyberattacks and their harmful effects. Security gaps in soft- and hardware represent one of the biggest challenges, since they are deeply rooted in these systems’ own development histories. Over and above this, the deep integration of, and high level of interdependency between, ICT and physical systems present new areas for attack, for which innovative defense concepts are hard to find.
The discovery of the ›Meltdown‹ hardware gap, that can be exploited using the ›Spectre‹ attack scenario, illustrated that full protection against cyber-attacks can never be guaranteed. Such gaps in security as these serious processor errors often remain undiscovered for years, during which time they can be exploited by attackers. A further problematic issue is soft- and hardware components that use outdated security solutions that, in addition to this, were often never intended to be used within a system of systems. These solutions often lack basic options for retrospective back-ups, such as patch management. Security experts have thus been giving warnings about inadequate quality control in the Internet of Things for many years now. The fight for market share often comes at the cost of product security, in turn often first made possible by the lack of quality control standards.
The Cyber-Resilient Architectures and Security competence cluster is addressing these challenges, answering them with a four-point model that makes systems robust, stable, and adjustable when faced with flexible, cooperative, intelligently acting attackers:
- A state-of-the-art security architecture for end-point and communications security provides the basis.
- A resilience architecture mitigates the eff ects and scope of impact of attacks.
- Metrics, methods, processes, and standards to measurably and verifiably secure the elements of these architectures and their interaction in development, evolution, and implementation.
- Usability and controllability of key user interfaces despite increasing system complexity.
Employees of the Competence Cluster
Thomas Strathmann: Model-based safety and security
Michael Brand: Trust models and anomaly detection
Björn Siemers: Incidence response and attack technologies
Persons 
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Prof. Dr. techn. Susanne Boll-Westermann
E-Mail: susanne.boll(at)informatik.uni-oldenburg.de, Phone: +49 441 9722-213, Room: O 47
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Prof. Dr. Martin Fränzle
E-Mail: martin.fraenzle(at)offis.de, Phone: +49 441 9722-566, Room: D 119/120
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Prof. Dr. Sebastian Lehnhoff
E-Mail: sebastian.lehnhoff(at)offis.de, Phone: +49 441 9722 240, Room: O 50
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Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Jorge Marx Gómez
E-Mail: jorge.marx-gomez(at)offis.de, Phone: +49 441 798 - 4470, Room: A4-3-315
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Sebastian Vander Maelen
E-Mail: Sebastian.vander.maelen(at)offis.de, Phone: +49 441 9722-176, Room: SEG08
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Projects
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Pyrate
Polymorphic agents as cross-sectional software technology for the analysis of the operational safety of cyber-physical systems
Duration: 2019 - 2022 Publications
2021
Demo abstract: A Platform to Assess the Trust in Power System Components, Data, and Services
Michael Brand, Felipe Castro, Batoul Hage Hassan, Carsten Krüger, Torben Logemann, Björn Siemers, Dennis Weller, Torge Wolff, Sebastian Lehnhoff; Abstracts of the 10th DACH+ Conference on Energy Informatics; 09 / 2021
2020
A Review of the Measures to Enhance Power Systems Resilience
Maedeh Mahzarnia ; Mohsen Parsa Moghaddam ; Payam Teimourzadeh Baboli ; Pierluigi Siano; IEEE Systems Journal; 2020
Virtualization Management Concept for Flexible and Fault-tolerant Smart Grid Service Provision
Attarha, Shadi and Narayan, Anand and Hage Hassan, Batoul and Krüger, Carsten and Castro, Felipe and Babazadeh, Davood and Lehnhoff, Sebastian; Energies; May / 2020
2019
Framework for the Integration of ICT-relevant Data in Power System Applications
Michael Brand, Shoaib Ansari, Felipe Castro, Ranim Chakra, Batoul Hage Hassan, Carsten Krüger, Davood Babazadeh, Sebastian Lehnhoff; PowerTech; 2019
Adversarial Resilience Learning — Towards Systematic Vulnerability Analysis for Large and Complex Systems
Fischer, Lars and Memmen, Jan-Menno and Veith, Eric M. S. P. and Tröschel, Martin; ENERGY 2019, The Ninth International Conference on Smart Grids, Green Communications and IT Energy-aware Technologies; 2019
Analyzing Cyber-Physical Systems from the Perspective of Artificial Intelligence
Eric M.S.P. Veith, Lars Fischer, Martin Tröschel, Astrid Nieße; International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Control; December / 2019
ENAV24-6.1.6 Secure IP Based Communication for MSI (S-124)
Sibylle Fröschle, Axel Hahn, Julius Möller, Jin H. Park; ENAV24; 2019
Trust in control: a trust model for power system network assessment
Brand, Michael and Babazadeh, Davood and Lehnhoff, Sebastian and Engel, Dominik; EPJ Web of Conferences; 2019
Trustworthy Identity and Key Management for Mobile Systems in Transportation
Sibylle Fröschle; Report from Dagstuhl Seminar 19432: Analysis of Autonomous Mobile Collectives in Complex Physical Environments; 2019
2018
Energy Efficient Resource Sharing in Multi-Operator Heterogeneous Cloud RAN
Farhat, Soha and Hassan, Batool Hage and Samhat, Abed Ellatif; 2018 14th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob); 2018
