Can you still see me? Identifying robot operations over end-to-end encrypted channels

Shah, Ryan and Ahmed, Chuadhry Mujeeb and Nagaraja, Shishir; (2022) Can you still see me? Identifying robot operations over end-to-end encrypted channels. In: WiSec 2022 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks. WiSec 2022 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks . ACM, New York, pp. 298-300. ISBN 9781450392167 (https://doi.org/10.1145/3507657.3529659)

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Abstract

Connected robots play a key role in automating industrial workflows. Robots can expose sensitive operational information to remote adversaries. Despite the use of end-to-end encryption, a passive adversary could fingerprint and reconstruct the entire workflows being carried out and developing a detailed understanding of how facilities operate. In this paper, we investigate whether a remote passive attacker can accurately fingerprint robot movements and reconstruct operational workflows. Using a neural network-based traffic analysis approach, we found that attackers can predict TLS-encrypted robot movements with around ~60% accuracy, increasing to near perfect accuracy in realistic settings. Ultimately, simply adopting best cybersecurity practices is not enough to stop even weak (passive) adversaries.

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