Attack Analysis for Distributed Control Systems: An Internal Model Principle Approach

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how cyber-physical attacks can exploit communication in distributed control systems, revealing vulnerabilities and proposing the internal model principle to understand and mitigate such threats.

Contribution

It introduces an internal model principle framework for attackers, providing a systematic analysis of worst-case attack effects on distributed control systems.

Findings

Stealthy attacks on root nodes can destabilize the entire network.

Attacks can cause misinterpretation of system state and destabilize synchronization.

Highlights the need for resilient control protocols against internal model attacks.

Abstract

Although adverse effects of attacks have been acknowledged in many cyber-physical systems, there is no system-theoretic comprehension of how a compromised agent can leverage communication capabilities to maximize the damage in distributed multi-agent systems. A rigorous analysis of cyber-physical attacks enables us to increase the system awareness against attacks and design more resilient control protocols. To this end, we will take the role of the attacker to identify the worst effects of attacks on root nodes and non-root nodes in a distributed control system. More specifically, we show that a stealthy attack on root nodes can mislead the entire network to a wrong understanding of the situation and even destabilize the synchronization process. This will be called the internal model principle for the attacker and will intensify the urgency of designing novel control protocols to mitigate these types of attacks.