Towards a Systematic Threat Modeling Approach for Cyber-physical Systems

Published

December 15, 2015

Author(s)

Goncalo Martins, Sajal Bhatia, Xenofon Koutsoukos, Keith A. Stouffer, CheeYee Tang, Rick Candell

Abstract

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are systems with seamless integration of physical, computational and networking components. These systems can potentially have an impact on the physical components, hence it is critical to safeguard them against a wide range of attacks. In this paper, it is argued that an effective approach to achieve this goal is to systematically identify the potential threats at the design phase of building such systems, commonly achieved via threat modeling. In this context, a tool to perform systematic analysis of threat modeling for CPS is proposed. A real-world wireless railway temperature monitoring system is used as a case study to validate the proposed approach. The threats identified in the system are subsequently mitigated using National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards.

Proceedings Title

2nd National Symposium on Resilient Critical Infrastructure (ISRCS 2015)

Conference Dates

August 18-20, 2015

Conference Location

Philadelphia, PA, US

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Cybersecurity, Cyber-physical systems (CPS), Industrial control systems (ICS), Threat modelling

Citation

Martins, G. , Bhatia, S. , Koutsoukos, X. , Stouffer, K. , Tang, C. and Candell, R. (2015), Towards a Systematic Threat Modeling Approach for Cyber-physical Systems, 2nd National Symposium on Resilient Critical Infrastructure (ISRCS 2015), Philadelphia, PA, US, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=919378 (Accessed October 21, 2025)