CoFacS -- Simulating a Complete Factory to Study the Security of Interconnected Production

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lenz, Stefan, Schachtschneider, David, Jonas, Simon, Tirpitz, Liam, Geisler, Sandra, Henze, Martin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lenz, Stefan
Schachtschneider, David
Jonas, Simon
Tirpitz, Liam
Geisler, Sandra
Henze, Martin
author_facet Lenz, Stefan
Schachtschneider, David
Jonas, Simon
Tirpitz, Liam
Geisler, Sandra
Henze, Martin
contents While the digitization of industrial factories provides tremendous improvements for the production of goods, it also renders such systems vulnerable to serious cyber-attacks. To research, test, and validate security measures protecting industrial networks against such cyber-attacks, the security community relies on testbeds to simulate industrial systems, as utilizing live systems endangers costly components or even human life. However, existing testbeds focus on individual parts of typically complex production lines in industrial factories. Consequently, the impact of cyber-attacks on industrial networks as well as the effectiveness of countermeasures cannot be evaluated in an end-to-end manner. To address this issue and facilitate research on novel security mechanisms, we present CoFacS, the first COmplete FACtory Simulation that replicates an entire production line and affords the integration of real-life industrial applications. To showcase that CoFacS accurately captures real-world behavior, we validate it against a physical model factory widely used in security research. We show that CoFacS has a maximum deviation of 0.11% to the physical reference, which enables us to study the impact of physical attacks or network-based cyber-attacks. Moreover, we highlight how CoFacS enables security research through two cases studies surrounding attack detection and the resilience of 5G-based industrial communication against jamming.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_14526
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CoFacS -- Simulating a Complete Factory to Study the Security of Interconnected Production
Lenz, Stefan
Schachtschneider, David
Jonas, Simon
Tirpitz, Liam
Geisler, Sandra
Henze, Martin
Cryptography and Security
Networking and Internet Architecture
While the digitization of industrial factories provides tremendous improvements for the production of goods, it also renders such systems vulnerable to serious cyber-attacks. To research, test, and validate security measures protecting industrial networks against such cyber-attacks, the security community relies on testbeds to simulate industrial systems, as utilizing live systems endangers costly components or even human life. However, existing testbeds focus on individual parts of typically complex production lines in industrial factories. Consequently, the impact of cyber-attacks on industrial networks as well as the effectiveness of countermeasures cannot be evaluated in an end-to-end manner. To address this issue and facilitate research on novel security mechanisms, we present CoFacS, the first COmplete FACtory Simulation that replicates an entire production line and affords the integration of real-life industrial applications. To showcase that CoFacS accurately captures real-world behavior, we validate it against a physical model factory widely used in security research. We show that CoFacS has a maximum deviation of 0.11% to the physical reference, which enables us to study the impact of physical attacks or network-based cyber-attacks. Moreover, we highlight how CoFacS enables security research through two cases studies surrounding attack detection and the resilience of 5G-based industrial communication against jamming.
title CoFacS -- Simulating a Complete Factory to Study the Security of Interconnected Production
topic Cryptography and Security
Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14526