Treasure maps and special effects: the digital twin offering to threat actors

This paper considers the offering made to threat actors by the deployment of digital twins around Operational Technology (OT), IoT and Smart City environments. In the context of a model for threat actor types it explores misuse cases that may be possible given an available or compromised digital twin. We present a proposed methodology for red teaming a digital twin’s deployment that reduces risk whilst preserving utility. The common consultancy recommendation that security equivalence must be established is challenged given that a digital twin often represents a physical or cyber-physical system, with wider physical security and societal threats being identified.