Emerging Coordinated Cyber-Physical-Systems Attacks and Adaptive Restoration Strategies

Abstract

A cyber-physical-system (CPS) framework serves as the foundation for the modern architecture of critical infrastructures, including electrical power grids, oil and natural gas distribution, transportation systems, and many more. Although the CPS design has assisted in the reliable, efficient, and robust service of physical systems, concurrently it has raised tremendous concern about secure and resilient operation due to the coupling and the presence of several hardware and software products among different CPS layers. These vulnerabilities have opened up a new avenue for adversaries to deploy coordinated cyber-physical attacks, with difficult detection, isolation, and recovery of the CPS. In this paper, we use smart grids and telecommunication networks as an example to elaborate on emerging challenges and analyze new types of coordinated cyber-physical attacks, such as multistage and multiwave attacks. A general model is presented for multistage and multiwave attacks along with adaptive restoration strategies for resilient recovery. The proposed framework is applicable to other CPS as well.