Asymmetrical vulnerability of heterogeneous multi-agent systems under false-data injection attacks

This paper investigates the vulnerability of heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) in face of perfect false-data injection (FDI) attacks that stealthily destabilize the synchronization processes of agents. In contrast to homogeneous dynamics, heterogeneous dynamics can be asymmetrically worsened by attackers, which is a greater challenge for MAS security. First of all, the existence conditions of perfect FDI attacks in different agents are established based on the spectral radius of heterogeneous system matrices. Then, it is proven that the attack targets against communication links are determined by the characteristic space of different agents. Since the attack properties including the attack existence and targets are different in each agent, heterogeneous MASs have the asymmetrical vulnerability under perfect FDI attacks. Finally, a sufficient condition and a necessary condition are obtained to achieve perfect FDI attacks with minimum attack targets. A numerical simulation of heterogeneous MASs is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of perfect FDI attacks.