Analysis and mitigation of vulnerabilities in short-range wireless communications for industrial control systems

Industrial radios deployed in critical infrastructure provide a potential vector for attackers to penetrate control systems used in the food and agriculture, chemical, critical manufacturing, dams, energy, defense industrial base, government facilities, nuclear reactors, materials and waste, transportation and water sectors. Industrial radios offer convenience and flexibility in deployment while presenting cyber security challenges that wired communications do not. This paper presents a survey of literature related to wireless communications cyber security. The paper focuses on vulnerabilities and mitigations related to multiple industrial radio technologies deployed in control systems including IEEE 802.15.4, WirelessHART, ZigBee, Bluetooth, and IEEE 802.11. This paper also discusses how industrial radio vulnerabilities may be used as vectors for simple and complex attacks on control systems found in critical infrastructure. Finally, this paper provides a set of recommendations for securing wireless networks used in control systems.