Security and Privacy in the Emerging Cyber-Physical World: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews security and privacy challenges in cyber-physical systems, highlighting attack patterns, models, and defenses related to IoT devices and signal injection threats.

Contribution

It systematically consolidates existing research on cyber-physical security, providing a unified attack model and insights into emerging threats and defense strategies.

Findings

Identified common attack patterns in CPS security.

Developed a general attack model for signal injection.

Highlighted the need for advanced defense mechanisms.

Abstract

With the emergence of low-cost smart and connected IoT devices, the area of cyber-physical security is becoming increasingly important. Past research has demonstrated new threat vectors targeting the transition process between the cyber and physical domains, where the attacker exploits the sensing system as an attack surface for signal injection or extraction of private information. Recently, there have been attempts to characterize an abstracted model for signal injection, but they primarily focus on the path of signal processing. This paper aims to systematize the existing research on security and privacy problems arising from the interaction of cyber world and physical world, with the context of broad CPS applications. The primary goals of the systematization are to (1) reveal the attack patterns and extract a general attack model of existing work, (2) understand possible new attacks, and (3) motivate development of defenses against the emerging cyber-physical threats.