[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-657471-105":59,"doc-detail-657471-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","obfuscation-of-function-block-diagrams","Obfuscation of function block diagrams","","Obfuscation transforms a program into an equivalent version that is harder to understand and reverse-engineer. The work addresses a gap in PLC-focused research, showing why attackers may hide malicious payloads in IEC 61131-3 PLC programs before compilation. The paper proposes five techniques for IEC 61131-3 Function Block Diagram (FBD) programs, evaluates them across different PLC tools, and proves at least four are practically applicable while identifying tool features that reduce abuse.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/obfuscation-of-function-block-diagrams/657471/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/obfuscation-of-function-block-diagrams/657471.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Boyslovefans","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-26",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What is the goal of software obfuscation in this paper?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"To transform a program into an equivalent version that is harder to understand and reverse-engineer, increasing an attacker’s effort and cost.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Why focus on IEC 61131-3 Function Block Diagram (FBD) PLC programs?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Because little attention has been paid to obfuscation for PLC programs, and attackers could hide malicious payloads in PLC code before it is compiled.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How many obfuscation techniques are presented for IEC 61131-3 FBD programs, and what is their practical status?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Five techniques are presented; at least four are proven practically applicable through experiments with different PLC programming tools.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},657471,1793114755,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":39,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":46},1374410101428,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_3d24733baf745e90a7e4bdd5f77d97b2","Obfuscation of function block diagrams  \nAntti Pakonen  \nCitation:  \nA. Pakonen. Obfuscation of function block diagrams. 2023 IEEE 28th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), Sinaia, Romania, September 12-15, 2023. IEEE, 2023.  \nDOI: 10. 1109/ETFA54631 .2023.10275363  \n© 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.  \nObfuscation of function block diagrams  \nAntti Pakonen  \nVTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., Espoo, Finland [Email: antti.pakonen@vtt.fi](Email: antti.pakonen@vtt.fi)  \nAbstract—Obfuscation is a process of transforming a program into an equivalent version which is harder to understand and reverse-engineer. Little attention has been paid to obfuscation techniques for programs written for programmable logic controllers (PLC). However, there is no reason to assume that an attacker would not be interested in hiding malicious payload into a PLC program before it is compiled to machine code.  \nIn this paper, I present five techniques for obfuscating IEC 61131-3 Function Block Diagram (FBD) programs. Four of the techniques are specific to the graphical representation of FBD. I then evaluate the applicability of each technique by experimenting with different PLC programming tools. I prove that at least four of the techniques are practically applicable, and demonstrate features that some tools successfully use to prevent abuse. Stricter rules, if implemented in IEC 61131-3, would prevent some of the techniques listed.  \nIndex Terms—Programmable logic devices, Embedded software, Cyberattack, Intellectual property  \nI. INTRODUCTION  \nSoftware obfuscation can be used for good or evil.  \nSoftware developers can protect their intellectual property by making their code harder for a pirate to reverseengineer [1] . In a cybersecurity sense, obfuscation makes it more costly for an outside attacker to understand and tamper with the program they have gained access to [1], [2] .  \nOn the other hand, a skillful attacker can employ obfuscation to hide their tracks and thwart discovery after injecting malicious code [3] .  \nAttackers have been able to inject malware into industrial programmable logic controllers (PLC) in critical applications (see, e.g., Stuxnet [4] or TRITON [5]) . While the target is typically the code in the PLC memory, we should not assume that a bad actor would not be interested in hiding malicious code in a PLC program before it is compiled, and the attack can also come from inside the developer organisation.  \nAccordingly, to cover all aspects of cybersecurity and intellectual property protection, the industry should be aware of the possible ways to obfuscate PLC programs written in the most common languages—the programming languages specified in the IEC 61131-3 standard [6] .  \nHowever, the literature on obfuscation techniques has to great extent focused on either compiled machine code, or general-purpose languages like C/C++ and Java/Javascript [3] . In this paper, I present five techniques for obfuscating IEC 61131-3 function block diagram (FBD) programs. Four of the techniques are novel, and specific to FBD programs. For the well-known [3], [7] technique of “Garbage insertion”, I specify FBD specific patterns for adding superfluous diagram  \nparts. I then evaluate the applicability of each technique by  \nexperimenting with five different PCL programming tools. Knowledge of the techniques may be of use for:  \n• I&C engineers in protecting their intellectual property, or making their programs more difficult to tamper with,  \n• FBD programming tool vendors in developing features in their tools to detect inadvisable programming pra","cbCaiinUVquD1xyG","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiinUVquD1xyG","pdf",828178,"English","# Introduction\n## Software obfuscation\n## IEC 61131-3 FBD","[{\"question\":\"What is the goal of software obfuscation in this paper?\",\"answer\":\"To transform a program into an equivalent version that is harder to understand and reverse-engineer, increasing an attacker’s effort and cost.\"},{\"question\":\"Why focus on IEC 61131-3 Function Block Diagram (FBD) PLC programs?\",\"answer\":\"Because little attention has been paid to obfuscation for PLC programs, and attackers could hide malicious payloads in PLC code before it is compiled.\"},{\"question\":\"How many obfuscation techniques are presented for IEC 61131-3 FBD programs, and what is their practical status?\",\"answer\":\"Five techniques are presented; at least four are proven practically applicable through experiments with different PLC programming tools.\"}]","Obfuscation of function block diagrams | PDF",1792980401]