Dual State-space Fidelity Blade (D-STAB): A Novel Stealthy Cyber-physical Attack Paradigm

TL;DR

The paper introduces D-STAB, a stealthy cyber-physical attack exploiting fidelity gaps in models to induce undetectable deviations, demonstrated on battery systems with BMS.

Contribution

It proposes a novel attack paradigm targeting firmware by leveraging high- and low-fidelity model discrepancies in cyber-physical systems.

Findings

D-STAB effectively induces undetected deviations in high-fidelity states.

The attack demonstrates significant impact on battery management systems.

Model fidelity gaps can be exploited for stealthy cyber-physical attacks.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel cyber-physical attack paradigm, termed the Dual State-Space Fidelity Blade (D-STAB), which targets the firmware of core cyber-physical components as a new class of attack surfaces. The D-STAB attack exploits the information asymmetry caused by the fidelity gap between high-fidelity and low-fidelity physical models in cyber-physical systems. By designing precise adversarial constraints based on high-fidelity state-space information, the attack induces deviations in high-fidelity states that remain undetected by defenders relying on low-fidelity observations. The effectiveness of D-STAB is demonstrated through a case study in cyber-physical battery systems, specifically in an optimal charging task governed by a Battery Management System (BMS).