Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Andrew Johnson <[email protected]> · Mon, 23 Apr 2018 18:02:53 -0500

Hi Gedare,

On 04/21/2018 09:53 AM, Gedare Bloom wrote:
> Hello EPICS Community,
> 
> tl;dr: I'm looking for a partner willing to work with me on security
> hardening their EPICS deployment over the next 3 years if we
> successfully obtain NSF funding. I'm also looking for statements of
> general interest/enthusiasm about security hardening for EPICS.

I can provide the latter, on behalf of the Core Developers group. We are
going to be interested in various aspects of what you're planning, and
should be able to offer suggestions and pointers on how hardening could
be integrated into the existing code-base. Eventually we will also have
to review any changes to the EPICS Core that your project comes up with
before they can be merged, so it is in all our interests to collaborate
and work together.

> I'm one of the RTEMS maintainers and also an assistant professor of
> computer science at Howard University. I'm planning an NSF CICI grant
> proposal submission before June 4 [1] that would intend to improve the
> cyber security of the EPICS hardware/software infrastructure for
> scientific research with an emphasis on RTOS security hardening, EPICS
> security hardening, and evaluation/enhancement of the EPICS network
> protocols for secure access.
> 
> If you're generally interested in this project, or you think it is a
> total waste of time, I'd be glad to hear about it here and discuss
> some more of the overall ideas. If you and your institution might be
> able to partner on this, please keep reading and contact me privately
> so we can arrange to discuss details offline.
> 
> I'm looking for a partner in the EPICS community able and willing to
> commit to work with me on integration of security improvements with a
> plan to install/upgrade EPICS (using RTEMS on the IOCs) in their
> deployment in the next 3 years.

I hope you will be able to find one or more such partners here. The code
that you develop must run on all our supported targets (not just RTEMS)
to be eligible for inclusion in official EPICS releases, and be licensed
under a compatible license (the EPICS Open license is BSD-like).

> I have reached out to the EPICS Council to gauge a general interest in
> this direction of development and received an initially positive
> response. Now, I would like to find a partner so that I can put
> together a proposal with firm commitments in place before the proposal
> submission deadline. I can carve out some funding for a partner
> willing to work directly with me to integrate and deploy the
> prototypes developed through the project.
> 
> [1] https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18547/nsf18547.htm
> 
> Sincerely,
> Gedare Bloom
> RTEMS Project Maintainer
> Assistant Professor of Computer Science
> Howard University

Please join and use our core-talk mailing list for technical discussions
and questions that don't need to be communicated to the whole community.
All the Core developers are subscribed to that list as well as here.

Thanks, and welcome!

- Andrew

-- 
Arguing for surveillance because you have nothing to hide is no
different than making the claim, "I don't care about freedom of
speech because I have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowdon

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System