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Monday, May 28, 2007
Ethernet PLC and VFD Crash / Vulnerability Causes Nuclear Plant Failure
The following articulates a real world case study and example why protocol stack security and reliability is so important. Excerpt From From a NRC report dated April 17, 2007
On August 19, 2006, operators at Browns Ferry, Unit 3, manually scrammed the unit following a loss of both the 3A and 3B reactor recirculation pumps. …
The licensee determined that the root cause of the event was the malfunction of the VFD controller because of excessive traffic on the plant ICS network. … The licensee could not conclusively establish whether the failure of the PLC caused the VFD controllers to ...
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Wurldtech Labs Announces First Set of Achilles Certified™ Industrial Controllers.
Six Industrial Controllers Earn Wurldtech Labs Achilles™ Security Certification Vancouver, BC May 15, 2007 – Wurldtech Labs, an independent division of Wurldtech Security Technologies, announced today the results of its initial round of Achilles™ Certification Testing. The following six products earned The Achilles™ Level 1 Certification: CENTUM CS 3000 R3 Field Control Unit – Yokogawa Electric Corporation; CENTUM CS 3000 R3 Vnet Router – Yokogawa Electric Corporation; DeltaV™ Controller – Emerson Process Management; ProSafe®-RS Vnet/IP Safety Control Unit – Yokogawa Electric Corporation; Tricon™ Safety Controller – Invensys Process Systems – Triconex; Trusted™ Safety Controller – ICS Triplex.
“As business and ...
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Monday, May 14, 2007
Automated Testing: Step by Step
Automated testing is inherently difficult. Worse, there is spotty coverage of the topic in university courses and experienced personnel are scarce in industry. As a result, there is a lot of confusion about the most important concepts and techniques.
Suppose that we want to perform automated testing of a networked SCADA device: the device-under-test or DUT. Typically, the following six steps are required:
Build the test harness. Configure a PC to send packets to, and receive packets from the DUT. The PC may use a commercial HMI or custom software to send and receive the packets. The PC may also ...
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Monday, May 14, 2007
Controllability and Observability in Test Automation
Once the test inputs have been selected and the expected outputs determined, test execution can begin. The cost of test execution is heavily influenced by two factors: controllability and observability. Controllability refers to the ease with which inputs may be supplied to the device-under-test (DUT). Observability refers to the ease with which outputs from the DUT may be observed.
Controllability and observability are useful in two important ways:
Controllability and observability help testers to predict test automation problems. Consider a test configuration using a GUI-based HMI to test a device. Here the controllability is poor: the inputs are supplied with ...
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