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Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications
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Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications

A special issue of Information (ISSN 2078-2489). This special issue belongs to the section "Information Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2020) | Viewed by 27198

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Daniele Codetta Raiteri

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Computer Science Institute, DiSIT, University of Piemonte Orientale, Alessandria, Italy
Interests: probabilistic graphical models; reliability; risk analysis; security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Fault trees are a well-known model for the reliability analysis of systems, used to compute several kinds of qualitative and quantitative measures, such as minimal cut sets, system failure probability, sensitivity indices, etc. Fault trees represent the possible combinations of component failures leading to system failure by means of logic gates (or ports). During the years, fault trees have been extended to increase their modelling power and deal with component dependencies, multi-state components, repair, etc. The modelling elements introduced to this end, such as new gates, required the definition of new solving procedures, typically based on the fault tree conversion into other models, such as binary decision diagrams (BDD), Markov Chains, Petri nets, Bayesian networks, etc. Besides the application in reliability analysis, fault trees have been exploited to model attack modes and evaluate the security level of systems. In this field, they are called attack trees and have been extended to represent both attacks and countermeasures. Software tools and libraries for fault/attack trees have been developed and improved over the years. The goal of this Special Issue is to collect recent developments in fault/attack tree extensions, solution methods, software tools, and applications in reliability and security evaluation. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Extensions of fault/attack trees in terms of modelling power
  • Automatic generation of lower-level models from fault/attack trees
  • Fault/attack tree analysis methods
  • Repair modelling in fault trees
  • Defence modelling in attack trees
  • Solution methods for fault/attack trees
  • Software tools for fault/attack tree design and analysis
  • Applications of fault/attack trees in real case studies

Dr. Daniele Codetta-Raiteri
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research

2 pages, 157 KiB  
Editorial
Editorial for the Special Issue on “Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications”
by Daniele Codetta-Raiteri
Information 2021, 12(4), 175; https://doi.org/10.3390/info12040175 - 20 Apr 2021
Viewed by 1363
Abstract
Fault Trees are well-known models for the reliability analysis of systems, used to compute several kinds of qualitative and quantitative measures, such as minimal cut-sets, system failure probability, sensitivity (importance) indices, etc [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

23 pages, 6232 KiB  
Article
A Proposal of Fault Tree Analysis for Embedded Control Software
by Masakazu Takahashi, Yunarso Anang and Yoshimichi Watanabe
Information 2020, 11(9), 402; https://doi.org/10.3390/info11090402 - 19 Aug 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3727
Abstract
There are many industrial products in our life, and the actions of those products are controlled by embedded control software (ECSW). Recently, many troubles have been caused by ECSW. To avoid those troubles, it is necessary to clarify the causes of the troubles [...] Read more.
There are many industrial products in our life, and the actions of those products are controlled by embedded control software (ECSW). Recently, many troubles have been caused by ECSW. To avoid those troubles, it is necessary to clarify the causes of the troubles and take countermeasures. However, the results of those tasks depend on the skills of the analyst. This paper proposes an analytic method that clarifies the causes of troubles by applying fault tree analysis (FTA) to the ECSW. The characteristics of the proposed method are as follows: Preparation of fault tree templates (FTTs) corresponding to instructions of the ECSW, and definition of the FT development rules by combining FTTs according to the back-tracing of the instruction execution process. By complying with the proposed method strictly, when an analyst who has studied computer science and safety engineering for 2–3 years conducts FTA, the analyst can obtain an appropriate result of FTA. This indicates that the safety level of ECSW will improve. As a result of applying the proposed method to existing ECSWs, we find that we can obtain the result of FTA at the appropriate level. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications)
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15 pages, 1670 KiB  
Article
Reliability Dynamic Analysis by Fault Trees and Binary Decision Diagrams
by Fausto Pedro García Márquez, Isaac Segovia Ramírez, Behnam Mohammadi-Ivatloo and Alberto Pliego Marugán
Information 2020, 11(6), 324; https://doi.org/10.3390/info11060324 - 15 Jun 2020
Cited by 47 | Viewed by 3873
Abstract
New wind turbines are becoming more complex and reliability analysis of them rising in complexity. The systems are composed of many components. Fault tree is used as an useful tool to analyze these interrelations and provide a scheme of the wind turbine, to [...] Read more.
New wind turbines are becoming more complex and reliability analysis of them rising in complexity. The systems are composed of many components. Fault tree is used as an useful tool to analyze these interrelations and provide a scheme of the wind turbine, to get a quick overview of the behavior of the system under certain conditions of the components. However, it is complicated and in some cases not possible, to identify the conditions that would generate a wind turbine failure. A quantitative and qualitative reliability analysis of the wind turbine is proposed in this study. Binary decision diagrams are employed as a suitable and operational method to facilitate this analysis and to get an analytical expression by the Boolean functions. The size of the binary decision diagram, i.e., the computational cost for solving the problem, has an important dependence on the order of the components or events considered. Different heuristic ranking methods are used to find an optimal order or one closed, and to validate the results: AND, level, top-down-left-right, deep-first search and breadth-first-search. Birnbaum and criticality importance measures are proposed to evaluate the relevance of each component. This analysis leads to classify the events according to their importance with respect to the probability of the top event. This analysis provides the basis for making medium and long-term maintenance strategies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications)
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22 pages, 419 KiB  
Article
SAVTA: A Hybrid Vehicular Threat Model: Overview and Case Study
by Mohammad Hamad and Vassilis Prevelakis
Information 2020, 11(5), 273; https://doi.org/10.3390/info11050273 - 19 May 2020
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 5394
Abstract
In recent years, significant developments were introduced within the vehicular domain, evolving the vehicles to become a network of many embedded systems which depend on a set of sensors to interact with each other and with the surrounding environment. While these improvements have [...] Read more.
In recent years, significant developments were introduced within the vehicular domain, evolving the vehicles to become a network of many embedded systems which depend on a set of sensors to interact with each other and with the surrounding environment. While these improvements have increased the safety and incontestability of the automotive system, they have opened the door for new potential security threats which need to be defined, assessed, and mitigated. The SAE J3061 standard has defined threat modeling as a critical step toward the secure development process for vehicle systems, but it did not determine which method could be used to achieve this process. Therefore, many threat modeling approaches were adopted. However, using one individual approach will not identify all the threats which could target the system, and may lead to insufficient mitigation mechanisms. Thus, having complete security requires the usage of a comprehensive threat model which identifies all the potential threats and vulnerabilities. In this work, we tried to revise the existing threat modeling efforts in the vehicular domain. Also, we proposed using a hybrid method called the Software, Asset, Vulnerability, Threat, and Attacker (SAVTA)-centric method to support security analysis for vehicular systems. SAVTA combines different existing threat modeling approaches to create a comprehensive and hybridized threat model. The model is used as an aid to construct general attack trees which illustrate attack vectors that threaten a particular vehicle asset and classify these attacks under different sub-trees. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications)
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20 pages, 3787 KiB  
Article
Importance Analysis of Components of a Multi-Operational-State Power System Using Fault Tree Models
by Leszek Chybowski
Information 2020, 11(1), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/info11010029 - 5 Jan 2020
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2819
Abstract
This article describes a case study using a fault tree analysis for a multi-operational-state system (system with several operational states) model with many different technical solutions for the power system of a fishing vessel. We describe the essence of system dependability metamodeling. A [...] Read more.
This article describes a case study using a fault tree analysis for a multi-operational-state system (system with several operational states) model with many different technical solutions for the power system of a fishing vessel. We describe the essence of system dependability metamodeling. A vector of external events was used to construct a detailed metamodel, depending on the operational status being modeled. In a fault tree, individual external events modify the structure of a system. The analysis includes the following operational states: sea voyages of a vessel, hauling in and paying out nets, trawling, staying in a port, and heaving to. For each operational state and assumed system configurations, the importance of system components was determined by calculating the Vesely–Fussell measures. The most important components for each operational state of a system were determined, and the critical system components, that is, those that are important in every operational state and system configuration, were identified. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications)
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28 pages, 1564 KiB  
Article
Decision Diagram Algorithms to Extract Minimal Cutsets of Finite Degradation Models
by Antoine Rauzy and Liu Yang
Information 2019, 10(12), 368; https://doi.org/10.3390/info10120368 - 25 Nov 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3015
Abstract
In this article, we propose decision diagram algorithms to extract minimal cutsets of finite degradation models. Finite degradation models generalize and unify combinatorial models used to support probabilistic risk, reliability and safety analyses (fault trees, attack trees, reliability block diagrams…). They formalize a [...] Read more.
In this article, we propose decision diagram algorithms to extract minimal cutsets of finite degradation models. Finite degradation models generalize and unify combinatorial models used to support probabilistic risk, reliability and safety analyses (fault trees, attack trees, reliability block diagrams…). They formalize a key idea underlying all risk assessment methods: states of the models represent levels of degradation of the system under study. Although these states cannot be totally ordered, they have a rich algebraic structure that can be exploited to extract minimal cutsets of models, which represent the most relevant scenarios of failure. The notion of minimal cutsets we introduce here generalizes the one defined for fault trees. We show how algorithms used to calculate minimal cutsets can be lifted up to finite degradation models, thanks to a generic decomposition theorem and an extension of the binary decision diagrams technology. We discuss the implementation and performance issues. Finally, we illustrate the interest of the proposed technology by means of the use case stemmed from the oil and gas industry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications)
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38 pages, 16344 KiB  
Article
Modelling and Resolution of Dynamic Reliability Problems by the Coupling of Simulink and the Stochastic Hybrid Fault Tree Object Oriented (SHyFTOO) Library
by Ferdinando Chiacchio, Jose Ignacio Aizpurua, Lucio Compagno, Soheyl Moheb Khodayee and Diego D’Urso
Information 2019, 10(9), 283; https://doi.org/10.3390/info10090283 - 11 Sep 2019
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4684
Abstract
Dependability assessment is one of the most important activities for the analysis of complex systems. Classical analysis techniques of safety, risk, and dependability, like Fault Tree Analysis or Reliability Block Diagrams, are easy to implement, but they estimate inaccurate dependability results due to [...] Read more.
Dependability assessment is one of the most important activities for the analysis of complex systems. Classical analysis techniques of safety, risk, and dependability, like Fault Tree Analysis or Reliability Block Diagrams, are easy to implement, but they estimate inaccurate dependability results due to their simplified hypotheses that assume the components’ malfunctions to be independent from each other and from the system working conditions. Recent contributions within the umbrella of Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment have shown the potential to improve the accuracy of classical dependability analysis methods. Among them, Stochastic Hybrid Fault Tree Automaton (SHyFTA) is a promising methodology because it can combine a Dynamic Fault Tree model with the physics-based deterministic model of a system process, and it can generate dependability metrics along with performance indicators of the physical variables. This paper presents the Stochastic Hybrid Fault Tree Object Oriented (SHyFTOO), a Matlab® software library for the modelling and the resolution of a SHyFTA model. One of the novel features discussed in this contribution is the ease of coupling with a Matlab® Simulink model that facilitates the design of complex system dynamics. To demonstrate the utilization of this software library and the augmented capability of generating further dependability indicators, three different case studies are discussed and solved with a thorough description for the implementation of the corresponding SHyFTA models. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fault Trees and Attack Trees: Extensions, Solution Methods, and Applications)
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