HRPDF: A Software-Based Heterogeneous Redundant Proactive Defense Framework for Programmable Logic Controller

Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) play a critical role in many industrial control systems, yet face increasingly serious cyber threats. In this paper, we propose a novel PLC-compatible software-based defense mechanism, called Heterogeneous Redundant Proactive Defense Framework (HRPDF). We propose a heterogeneous PLC architecture in HRPDF, including multiple heterogeneous, equivalent, and synchronous runtimes, which can thwart multiple types of attacks against PLC without the need of external devices. To ensure the availability of PLC, we also design an inter-process communication algorithm that minimizes the overhead of HRPDF. We implement a prototype system of HRPDF and test it in a real-world PLC and an OpenPLC-based device, respectively. The results show that HRPDF can defend against multiple types of attacks with 10.22% additional CPU and 5.56% additional memory overhead, and about 0.6 ms additional time overhead.