Stressing the importance of a secure system for nuclear power plant computer systems, a Pittsburgh-based software company SpiralGen Inc. said Thursday it would use Department of Energy Small Business Innovation Research funding to adapt technologies developed for military use “to provide new inner layers of defense against cyber attacks in nuclear power plants.”
Enhanced cyber security for nuclear plants was made clear with the revelation of Stuxnet, a computer virus that was able to sabotage centrifuges used in Iran’s nuclear program, SpiralGen said in a statement.
SpiralGen’s project will develop provably-correct software components for controls, monitors and sensor fusion that are resistant to such attacks, as well as malfunctions. The new technology will be deployable in phases that are compatible with the regulatory requirements and normal outage schedules of nuclear power plants, the company said.
“The first phase of the project will supply a proof-of-concept implementation of a nuclear power feedwater control subsystem and the first version of a toolkit to specify and build such components. This toolkit will improve the reliability of control systems while lowering the development cost.
By combining high assurance code developed with SpiralGen’s proprietary automatic code generation system, Spiral, a spoof-proof system of checks and balances will be created that alerts nuclear power workers to all anomalies in their system, accidental or man-made.”
“The world cannot afford another Stuxnet. We are confident our solution will have a positive impact in keeping our critical infrastructure safer,” said Mike Franusich, SpiralGen’s Vice President of Engineering, and the principal investigator of the project.
Franusich joined SpiralGen in 2013 after spending eight years at Westinghouse.
SpiralGen is a privately held company, formed in 2009 to deliver super fast software components for cutting-edge parallel computing platforms. The firm holds the exclusive license to Spiral software generation and optimization technology, developed under the lead of Carnegie Mellon University. Clients include businesses and government agencies. SpiralGen has worked with Intel, Mercury Systems, and Argonne National Labs, and has won grants from DARPA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Technology Collaborative of Pittsburgh.