Multistep Sensor Attackability in Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

This work investigates cyber-attacks targeting cyber-physical systems in the framework of discrete event systems. From intruders’ perspective, we propose a concept called k-step attackability to explore attack scenarios where intruders are constrained by a limited number of attack operations. In particular, we focus on a class of sensor attacks where sensor readings can be replaced, deleted, and inserted during transmission. We examine k-step attackability under such attacks and address its verification problem by proposing a structure termed an attack recognizer. It evaluates whether an arbitrary strategy generated by an attack structure can compromise a system within a certain number of attacks. Furthermore, we extend this work to general attack scenarios and provide a method to identify desired attack strategies.