Optimal Attack Strategies Subject to Detection Constraints Against Cyber-Physical Systems

Journal Article · Fri Mar 31 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/TCNS.2017.2690399· OSTI ID:1406998

Chen, Yuan  ^[1]; Kar, Soummya  ^[1]; Moura, Jose M. F. ^[1]

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1. Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States)

This paper studies an attacker against a cyberphysical system (CPS) whose goal is to move the state of a CPS to a target state while ensuring that his or her probability of being detected does not exceed a given bound. The attacker’s probability of being detected is related to the nonnegative bias induced by his or her attack on the CPS’s detection statistic. We formulate a linear quadratic cost function that captures the attacker’s control goal and establish constraints on the induced bias that reflect the attacker’s detection-avoidance objectives. When the attacker is constrained to be detected at the false-alarm rate of the detector, we show that the optimal attack strategy reduces to a linear feedback of the attacker’s state estimate. In the case that the attacker’s bias is upper bounded by a positive constant, we provide two algorithms – an optimal algorithm and a sub-optimal, less computationally intensive algorithm – to find suitable attack sequences. Finally, we illustrate our attack strategies in numerical examples based on a remotely-controlled helicopter under attack.

• Research Organization: Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Electricity (OE)
• Grant/Contract Number: OE0000779
• OSTI ID: 1406998
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1433649
• Journal Information: IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, Vol. PP, Issue 99; ISSN 2325-5870
• Publisher: IEEE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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