The SheevaPlug 3.0 is a full PC in a tiny package. Featuring a 2 ghz Armada cpu, built in micro HD, usb, Wi-Fi, hi speed ethernet and blue tooth in an about 2″x3″ “plug in” form (no bigger than a lot of laptop power supplies) the SheevaPlus takes up just an outlet and a little wall space. At $99.00, it presents some interesting control system security prospects.
As the SheevaPlug runs a Linux OS it would be easy to configure the plug to port forward traffic over a SSH or SSL tunnel to provide a “bump in the wire” encryption solution for around $125.00 + installation and configuration time. Why $125.00? Well, the plug itself is $99.00 but as it only has 1 nic it would require a USB ethernet adaptor to create the pass through capability. Such adaptors are readily available at the $25.00 price point.
Once a baseline configuration was developed for an installation it could be cloned and pushed onto the other plug devices and then installed on the plant floor. With 2.0 ghz essentially dedicated to encryption, and the fast ethernet ports, it looks effective (on paper) at performing full packet encryption without adding process killing lag into the network communications.