Title: Investigation of control theoretic cyber attacks on controllers

Authors: Hemangi Laxman Gawand; Anup Kumar Bhattacharjee; Kallol Roy

Addresses: Homi Bhabha National Institute, BARC, India ' Reactor Control Division, BARC, India ' Research Reactor Maintenance Division, BARC, India

Abstract: National critical infrastructures like power plants, power grids, industrial process plants, water distribution systems employ a hierarchy of controllers designed to control the physical/chemical processes safely and optimally. They deploy sophisticated control algorithms implemented in software and exchange control commands and information over networks. Various researches have examined attack scenarios in such embedded control systems from control theoretic perspectives. This paper revisits the theoretical aspects of these attacks and postulates that such attacks can be detected by statistical techniques like sequential probability ratio test (SPRT), cumulative sum (CUSUM), multiple model Kalman filter etc. The proposed techniques are studied closely for their effectiveness by extensive simulations.

Keywords: cyber-physical systems; CPS; false data injection attacks; sequential probability ratio test; SPRT; Kalman filter; targeted attacks; false data injection attacks; control attack models; control theory; cyber attacks; embedded control systems; CUSUM; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCC.2016.077410

International Journal of Systems, Control and Communications, 2016 Vol.7 No.3, pp.273 - 305

Received: 08 Jul 2015
Accepted: 28 Jan 2016
Published online: 29 Jun 2016 *

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