Quantum Key Distribution for Critical Infrastructures: Towards Cyber-Physical Security for Hydropower and Dams

Hydropower facilities are often remotely monitored or controlled from a centralized remote control room. Additionally, major component manufacturers monitor the performance of installed components, increasingly via public communication infrastructures. While these communications enable efficiencies...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 23; no. 24; p. 9818
Main Authors: Green, Adrien, Lawrence, Jeremy, Siopsis, George, Peters, Nicholas A., Passian, Ali
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 14.12.2023
MDPI
Subjects:
Communication
Connectivity
Control systems
critical infrastructure
Cryptography
cyber-physical security
Cybersecurity
Cyberterrorism
Dams
Digital signatures
Germany
Hydroelectric power
Hydroelectric power plants
hydropower
Infrastructure
Infrastructure (Economics)
Internet
MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
Modernization
QKD
QKD post-processing
quantum key distribution
quantum security
R&D
Remote control
Research & development
Technology
Water-power
Germany
critical infrastructure
hydropower
QKD post-processing
cyber-physical security
quantum key distribution
QKD
dams
quantum security
ISSN:1424-8220, 1424-8220
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Hydropower facilities are often remotely monitored or controlled from a centralized remote control room. Additionally, major component manufacturers monitor the performance of installed components, increasingly via public communication infrastructures. While these communications enable efficiencies and increased reliability, they also expand the cyber-attack surface. Communications may use the internet to remote control a facility’s control systems, or it may involve sending control commands over a network from a control room to a machine. The content could be encrypted and decrypted using a public key to protect the communicated information. These cryptographic encoding and decoding schemes become vulnerable as more advances are made in computer technologies, such as quantum computing. In contrast, quantum key distribution (QKD) and other quantum cryptographic protocols are not based upon a computational problem, and offer an alternative to symmetric cryptography in some scenarios. Although the underlying mechanism of quantum cryptogrpahic protocols such as QKD ensure that any attempt by an adversary to observe the quantum part of the protocol will result in a detectable signature as an increased error rate, potentially even preventing key generation, it serves as a warning for further investigation. In QKD, when the error rate is low enough and enough photons have been detected, a shared private key can be generated known only to the sender and receiver. We describe how this novel technology and its several modalities could benefit the critical infrastructures of dams or hydropower facilities. The presented discussions may be viewed as a precursor to a quantum cybersecurity roadmap for the identification of relevant threats and mitigation.
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AC05-00OR22725; FG2-13ER41967; W911NF-19-1-0397; DGE-2152168
National Science Foundation (NSF)
USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
US Army Research Office (ARO)
USDOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER)
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s23249818