Securing javascript runtime of OPC UA deployments

Abstract

OPC UA is a commonly used machine-to-machine communication protocol. As it is used in industrial critical infrastructure, its security is vital. OPC UA has several proprietary and open-source implementations in different programming languages. Among them, a JavaScript implementation node-opcua stands out due to advantages such as ease of use, code maturity etc. JavaScript is a just-in-time compiled programming language that is executed by a runtime system. Node.js is the most common runtime environment to run JavaScript programs. Deno is it a potential and unofficial successor as it is developed by the original author of Node.js. One promised improvement of Deno is the focus on higher security, such as having a restricted file system and network access by default. Since (1) not all libraries have been adopted yet for for Deno, since (2) this new runtime comes with a compatibility mode featured first in version v1.15, since (3) there is very few research literature yet and since (4) there is no current dedicated OPC UA implementation for Deno so far, we present and evaluate measures to overcome errors when running node-opcua on Deno in this paper.