DCE CSA Launches iTrust’s Water Distribution Testbed at SUTD’s Annual Secure Cyber-Physical Systems Week Event

Mr Teo Chin Hock, DCE CSA, launched iTrust’s second testbed, the Water Distribution (WADI) at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) on 26 July. The launch was part of SUTD’s Secure Cyber-Physical Systems Week, an annual event that brings together researchers from the cyber security community to deliberate on focused areas and challenges in cyber security.

WADI is an extension to the Secure Water Treatment (SWaT) testbed and comprises two elevated reservoir tanks, six consumer tanks, two raw water tanks and a return tank with a combined flowrate of 10 US gallons per minute.It has the capabilities to simulate the effects of physical attacks such as water leakage and malicious chemical injections. Together with SWaT, WADI provides opportunities for researchers to work on a full spectrum of possible cyber and physical attacks on a water treatment and distribution plant.

After a tour of the WADI testbed facility, Mr Teo was invited to observe the SWaT Security Showdown where 12 attack and defence teams representing academia, and international and local companies,compete to demonstrate their capabilities in this hands-on cyber security event. Using the SWaT testbed, the attack teams must deploy methods for meeting a pre-defined set of challenges, such as by attacking the plant network layers, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)/ supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network or the sensor network while the defence teams must detect as many attacks as possible and install their defences prior to the launch of the attacks.