Understanding the dynamics involved in industrial IoT attacks is crucial to perform security risk analysis and mitigation. Threat modeling is commonly used as a security countermeasure, and has been discussed later in this chapter. Attack and fault trees are two methodologies useful to develop security threat models and to communicate the risk of an attack.
In the real world, most attacks are highly customized to target specific vulnerabilities in IoT products and connectivity. Many attacks target zero-day vulnerabilities. In the case of zero-day vulnerabilities, an exploit already exists and can be easily proliferated through the internet or corporate networks to create a snowball effect. Since IIoT involves significant investment and skills, most attacks involve nation state threat actors, who are motivated to create a major impact.
Some common types of attacks in the IIoT context are as follows:
- Malware-triggered ransomware
- Wired and wireless scanning...