Attack Induced Common-Mode Failures on PLC-Based Safety System in a Nuclear Power Plant: Practical Experience Report.

This paper demonstrates attack induced common-mode failures on an industrial-grade (Tricon) Triple-Modular-Redundant PLC (programmable logic controller) and its impact in a Nuclear Power Plant settings. The attack exploits the fact that during the configuration phase the same control logic is downloaded to all three redundant modules. We describe how an attacker can exploit this vulnerability to embed malicious control logic and how to trigger the attack. The feasibility and the attack impact are evaluated on a testbed, which includes the Tricon PLC as part of a safety protection system in a simulated nuclear power plant.