A Testbed for Performing Security Experiments with Software-Defined Industrial Control Systems

Stimulated by the recent progress and the integration of technological solutions from the field of traditional IP networks, Industry 4.0 is known as the new industrial revolution, which can fundamentally reshape the functioning of our modern society. Nevertheless, this technological revolution also raises new challenges pertaining to the security design and maintenance of industrial installations. To this end, emerging paradigms such as Software-Defined Networks (SDN) demonstrated to represent a promising candidate and a key enabler for closing the loop between detection of cyber attacks and the mitigation strategies provisioned into Industrial Control Systems (ICS). However, the development and testing of SDN-enabled security solutions for ICS in production environments can threaten the operation of mission-critical services. To address these issues, this work documents the development of a testbed for performing security experiments with SDN-enabled ICS. The testbed supports custom test scenarios, including the recreation of large-scale industrial SDN-based infrastructures, traffic generators, as well as, tools for monitoring and analyzing the generated data. It leverages the Mininet network emulation tool and the POX SDN controller. An extensive case study demonstrates the applicability of the testbed.