Enhancing Industrial Cybersecurity: SoftHSM Implementation on SBCs for Mitigating MITM Attacks

Abstract: The rapid growth of industrial technology, driven by automation, IoT, and cloud computing, has also increased the risk of cyberattacks, such as Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. A standard solution to protect data is using a Hardware Security Module (HSM), but its high implementation cost has led to the development of a more affordable alternative: SoftHSM. This software-based module manages encryption and decryption keys using cryptographic algorithms. This study simulates the use of SoftHSM on a single-board computer (SBC) to enhance industrial system security and cost-effectively mitigate MITM attacks. The security system integrates AES and RSA cryptographic algorithms, with SoftHSM handling RSA key storage. The results show that HSM protects RSA private keys from extraction attempts, ensuring data security. In terms of performance, the system achieved an average encryption time of 3.29 seconds, a slot access time of 0.018 seconds, and a decryption time of 2.558 seconds. It also demonstrated efficient memory usage, with 37.24% for encryption and 24.24% for decryption, while consuming 5.20 V and 0.72 A during processing.