Secure Forensics Port For ICS Embedded Devices

### Overview During major operational technology (OT) and industrial control system (ICS) cyber incidents—such as the Colonial Pipeline ransomware event—asset owners face significant uncertainty when attempting to answer the critical question: "Are we cyber clean?" When SCADA networks and telemetry are proactively shut down or under adversary control, operators lack visibility into the internal state of embedded devices (Level 0, 1, and 2 devices). Current recovery workflows rely on shallow front-panel LCD displays, push buttons, or sending hardware back to vendors through slow RMA processes, which rarely produce timely or widely shared threat intelligence. To solve this visibility and verification bottleneck, the speaker proposes establishing an open standard for a hardware-level "Secure Forensics Port" (SFP) directly integrated into embedded ICS devices.

### Key Topics - **The OT Verification Gap:** Abundant network telemetry exists during normal operations, but there is an inability to inspect low-level device internals when systems are isolated or compromised. - **Limitations of Current Incident Response:** Field responders are constrained by basic two-row LCD panels and limited physical interfaces, while vendor RMA pathways are slow, often private, and fail to scale during widespread incidents. - **Home Court Advantage:** Physical access to field equipment is a key operational advantage for defenders, but it is currently squandered due to balkanized, vendor-specific administrative methods. - **Secure Element Interface (SEI):** Implementing miniaturized custom hardware boards inside device chassis to take fundamental forensic measurements without requiring server racks or cloud compute. - **Standardized Cryptographic Authorization:** Using public key authentication, X.509/certificate authority architectures, and standardized entitlement Object Identifiers (OIDs) to balance forensic access with vendor intellectual property.

### Technical Details The speaker's team demonstrated the feasibility of this architecture by prototyping a custom board integrated into two production devices—a gas remote terminal unit (RTU) and an electric sector real-time automation controller (RTAC)—without proprietary vendor assistance. The architecture centers around a Secure Element Interface (SEI): - **Cryptographic Framework:** Employs standard public key cryptography rather than custom algorithms. At manufacturing time, certificate authorities configure credentials within the SEI. - **Authorization & Entitlements:** Responders connect via an engineering workstation acting as a client. Access is governed by standardized entitlements mapped to certificate OIDs. These dictate permissible actions such as reading device memory, dumping firmware, examining file systems, or uploading configurations. In this OT context, read operations are often treated as more sensitive than write operations to protect proprietary settings and firmware IP. - **Operational Workflows:** Instead of manually evaluating one substation box at a time, the port enables concurrent, edge-based scanning to rapidly verify whether devices are uncompromised or require remediation.

### Takeaways - **Accelerated Recovery:** A dedicated, standardized forensic interface provides a fast diagnostic path, reducing decision time for safe system restarts after an intrusion. - **Secondary Use Cases:** Beyond incident response, the port provides a trusted backstop for supply chain auditing, asset enumeration, and predictive maintenance. - **Call to Action:** The speaker calls for utilities, manufacturers, and standards bodies to form a technical community of interest, refine the cryptographic and entitlement specifications, and build additional prototypes across a wider range of field devices.