Security of critical information infrastructures exposed to mobile personal devices

Mobile personal devices with USB communication capabilities are essential elements of our modern lives. Their large-scale pervasive deployment within the population has promoted many malware attacks some of which are capable of infiltrating physically isolated critical control systems. This research investigates mobile malware capable of infecting and spreading through a system with heterogeneous computing, communication and storage components. Two novel prevention methods are presented: user accountability and system immunity. While the former uses a novel intrusive USB authentication, authorization and accounting solution, the latter exploits coding theory to make the system immune and allergic to the malware behaviour.