Yekta IT at the Advanced Train Lab: cybersecurity for rail vehicles
Modern rail vehicles are connected systems with complex communication structures. That connectivity brings efficiency, and it opens new ways in. In the FINESSE project we work on this, and recently ran a workshop with test runs at the Advanced Train Lab (aTL) in Schreibenberg.
FINESSE workshop at the Advanced Train Lab
Representatives of all FINESSE partners, DB Systemtechnik, ETAS, Fraunhofer SIT, INCYDE, the University of Passau and Yekta IT, came together to present their work so far and test it under real operating conditions. With its research vehicle, the Advanced Train Lab is the right place to validate the security work we have built. INCYDE brought their MVB attacker hardware for realistic attack scenarios.
Y-MVB-IDS and the rail security operations centre
Ali Recai Yekta and Cenk Yekta presented two central parts of our security architecture for rail:
Y-MVB-IDS: our intrusion detection system flags suspicious activity in the vehicle network as it happens. It watches the Multifunction Vehicle Bus (MVB), which connects every critical component of a train, from the brakes to the door control.
Rail security operations centre: our answer to coordinating incidents centrally and triggering the right response. The rail SOC makes it possible to monitor and analyse threats across an entire fleet.
Assessing the threat realistically
Combining attack simulation with countermeasures is what makes a realistic assessment possible. You cannot build effective defence without understanding how the attack works. The test runs at the Advanced Train Lab showed us how much validation under real conditions changes the picture.
Attacks on critical infrastructure are increasing. Rail vehicles need preventive security measures in place before an attack causes disruption or a safety problem. That is what we are working on in FINESSE.
The test runs at the Advanced Train Lab were an important milestone for validating our technology under realistic conditions. Our thanks to the Advanced Train Lab team and to DB Systemtechnik for the support.
The project: FINESSE, attack detection for road and rail