Synthesis of Sensor Deception Attacks at the Supervisory Layer of Cyber-Physical Systems

TL;DR

This paper develops a formal framework for synthesizing stealthy sensor deception attacks on the supervisory layer of cyber-physical systems, enabling the creation of attack strategies that evade detection and induce system failure.

Contribution

It introduces a novel game-based model called Insertion-Deletion Attack structure (IDA) for synthesizing stealthy sensor deception attacks in CPS supervisory control.

Findings

Successfully synthesizes three types of stealthy attacks

Demonstrates how to induce system failures without detection

Provides a formal method for attack strategy design

Abstract

We study the security of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in the context of the supervisory control layer. Specifically, we propose a general model of a CPS attacker in the framework of discrete event systems and investigate the problem of synthesizing an attack strategy for a given feedback control system. Our model captures a class of deception attacks, where the attacker has the ability to hijack a subset of sensor readings and mislead the supervisor, with the goal of inducing the system into an undesirable state. We utilize a game-like discrete transition structure, called Insertion-Deletion Attack structure (IDA), to capture the interaction between the supervisor and the environment (which includes the system and the attacker). We show how to use IDAs to synthesize three different types of successful stealthy attacks, i.e., attacks that avoid detection from the supervisor and cause damage to the system.