Possibilities of industrial Ethernet usage in safety critical applications

Authors describe the possibilities of the industrial Ethernet usage in safety-critical applications as a component of safety-related control systems. The main part of the paper summarizes the safety requirements of industrial Ethernet ProfiNet and Ethernet/IP based on ProfiSafe and CIPSafety safety profiles oriented towards identification of communication errors and recommendations of protective mechanisms which are applied in communication protocols. In the practical part the results of performed cryptanalytic attacks on the wireless communication protocol based on the IEEE 802.11 standard are mentioned.