WaterJam: An Experimental Case Study of Jamming Attacks on a Water Treatment System

An experiment was conducted to investigate network jamming attacks on an Industrial Control Systems. The Secure Water Treatment (SWaT) system was chosen to perform the experiments. Jamming attacks were launched on SWaT using software defined radio. Attacks were designed to meet attacker objectives selected from a Cyber Physical Systems specific attacker model. Attacks exposed vulnerabilities associated with design of SWaT and suggested modifications in the architecture owing to broadcast nature of wireless system update and control. This investigation was focused on (a) how jamming attacks can be performed on Industrial Control Systems, (b) what communication links to jam and why? (c) what is the impact of jamming attacks on SWaT? The observed response to various attacks was then used to propose attack detection mechanisms. While the jamming attacks were applied to a specific water treatment plant, the underlying ideas are generic and could be applied to other public infrastructure systems as well.