Badgerboard: Weaseling Out The Unknown
Carl Hurd
S4x24 - ICS Security Conference · Day 3 · Main Stage
In the realm of Industrial Control System (ICS) security, a persistent blind spot has long hindered effective threat detection: the internal communications within Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). Carl Hurd's talk, "Badgerboard: Weaseling Out The Unknown," presented at S4, delves into this critical visibility gap and proposes a novel approach to bridge it. The research, conducted by Hurd and his colleague Jared Riddle at Talos (Cisco), introduces the concept of **Badgerboard**, an ambitious project aimed at gaining unprecedented insight into the proprietary backplane networks that interconnect PLC modules.
AI review
Carl Hurd's presentation on Badgerboard tackles a critical, often-ignored blind spot in ICS security: the internal communications within PLC backplanes. This research proposes a technically ambitious and brutally honest approach to gain unprecedented visibility into these proprietary Layer 2 switched networks. While still an ongoing research effort without a live demonstration, the project's focus on deep reverse engineering, novel interception techniques like ARP poisoning, and its commitment to retrofitting existing infrastructure for enhanced threat detection makes it a highly valuable…