DPU-LARK: DPU-leveraged attestation of remote kernels for securing OT networks

Kozlowski, William

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124429 Copy

Description

Title

DPU-LARK: DPU-leveraged attestation of remote kernels for securing OT networks

Author(s)

Kozlowski, William

Issue Date

2024-05-03

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Chen, Deming

Department of Study

Electrical & Computer Eng

Discipline

Electrical & Computer Engr

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

Cyber Security, Attestation, Critical Infrastructure Security, SmartNIC

Abstract

It is widely recognized that critical infrastructures of nations present a significant and lucrative target for cyber-attacks and threat actors. With numerous real-world examples, such as the attack on the Ukranian power grid in 2015 which caused 225,000 customers to go without power, the need to secure the networks of such systems is more important than ever. This study aims to examine the efficacy of using a smart-NIC, such as the Bluefield-2 DPU, as a solution to enable greater cyber-security in the Smart Grid and other operational technology networks. While studies have been conducted to introduce remote attestation to OT networks, they fail to consider high-speed performance. Presented here is DPU-LARK, the first remote attestation scheme which considers message latency for common OT network messaging protocols. It tests the performance of this scheme using a Bluefield-2 DPU as a verifier, and compares them to solutions using a CPU alone. It also evaluates the performance of the scheme on low-power prover devices (micro-controllers) to determine the effect of the construction on latency, availability, memory, and network traffic. It finds that the DPU is able to outperform expensive, server-grade CPU’s with relevant hardware acceleration for high prover counts by up to 1.7x, and match performance at lower counts with much lighter cost. For CPU’s without acceleration, the DPU surpasses their performance by 11x-22x. Furthermore, under typical circumstances, DPU-LARK offers 99.9% availability for a 33s attestation period. Furthermore, message validation latency is negligible whenever a device is available.

Graduation Semester

2024-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 William Kozlowski

Owning Collections