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Taking the Measure   


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Can Instruments Catch the Flu?
November 4, 2005

As LAN connectivity begins to pervade test-system applications, test engineers are raising concerns over reliability, security, and susceptibility to viruses. That's an issue Plantronics test engineers have dealt with, as described in our November cover story, and various participants in a recent Webcast on LXI (LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation) raised related questions.

I replied to one Webcast participant that I am not aware of any concern over LXI-specific viruses, but of course if you have any instruments linked to each other and to host computers over an intranet or the Internet, then the typical virus considerations would apply. As an example, our November cover story recounts Plantronics' efforts to link its US headquarters to production test systems (GPIB in this case, not LXI) at contract manufacturers located in Mexico and China. Viruses were a key consideration. The Plantronics test engineers had to implement anti-virus measures as well as firewalls that would protect Plantronics databases from the CMs, and vice versa.

As for LXI-specific viruses, I don't think the quantities of systems would be attractive to your typical hacker. On the other hand, a disgruntled test engineer might conceivably come up with something that commercial virus packages couldn't deal with.

As I mentioned, many questions submitted during and after the LXI Webcast centered on viruses and reliability, so that seems to be a concern that proponents for LAN-connected instruments will increasingly be asked to address.


Posted by Rick Nelson on November 4, 2005 | Comments (5)


November 8, 2005
In response to: Can Instruments Catch the Flu?
Joseph Travis commented:

Some of our instruments connected on a LAN have suffered from common viruses--fortunately nothing serious. However, we have experienced situations where an engineer was developing a test on a desktop PC using the instrument's GUI application program, and the GUI was connected to the instrument without the engineer realizing it, causing a lab test station to badly misbehave.




November 9, 2005
In response to: Can Instruments Catch the Flu?
Dan commented:

The mountain peaks were climbed because they were there. This is just another challenge.




November 9, 2005
In response to: Can Instruments Catch the Flu?
Dennis commented:

As time goes by we are getting more and more high dollar pieces of test equipment that run their application on top of a Windows 2000, NT, XP, etc. operating system. We all know that windows has several exploitable weaknesses and all that is needed is for the LAN-connected piece of equipment to encounter one of the bugs, and we have a high-dollar boat anchor until someone can go in and reformat the disk drive and reload the instrument's aps.




November 22, 2005
In response to: Can Instruments Catch the Flu?
DJP commented:

A compromised system could produce results that would be eligible for inclusion in "The Journal of Irreproducible Results." While I try to ensure the results I get are valid, someone could cause the system to produce bogus results that have the appearance of validity. If I wasn't ethical, and trying to actually learn something, I could take a standard curve and apply a few scaling parameters to get any result I desired.




December 1, 2005
In response to: Can Instruments Catch the Flu?
Steven Davis commented:

Imagine a system with 10 GPIB-connected instruments tied to a network-connected PC or workstation. The engineer need only maintain a single network connection--the PC--to access each of those instruments via LAN. Long established protocols like Remote VISA make that transparent (i.e., open session to \\PCIPADDRESS\GPIB0::3::INSTR). Now, replace those 10 GPIB instruments with 10 LAN instruments, and suddenly 11 separate network connections must be managed, in addition to that network switch you had to put in just for connectivity. So here's a nifty little Friday afternoon activity if things get slow. Call your IT department. Tell them you want to put a new PC on the network for an automated test system. Later, have your buddy make the same call, except he asks to put a PC, network switch, and 10 LAN instruments on the network. Compare responses.





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