Visible to the public Reducing Vulnerability to Cyber-Physical Attacks in Water Distribution Networks

TitleReducing Vulnerability to Cyber-Physical Attacks in Water Distribution Networks
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2018
AuthorsNicolaou, N., Eliades, D. G., Panayiotou, C., Polycarpou, M. M.
Conference Name2018 International Workshop on Cyber-physical Systems for Smart Water Networks (CySWater)
ISBN Number978-1-5386-6744-6
Keywordsactuator security, actuators, composability, control requirements, cyber attack, cyber physical systems, cyber-physical attacks, cyber-physical security level, Cyber-physical systems, digital devices, Human Behavior, industrial control, industrial control systems, malicious attacks, Metrics, Monitoring, physical processes, power engineering computing, power system security, programmable controllers, pubcrawl, Redundancy, redundant cyber components, Resiliency, security, security of data, sensor measurements, Sensors, simple control laws, Vulnerability, water distribution, water distribution networks, Water resources, water supply
Abstract

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), such as Water Distribution Networks (WDNs), deploy digital devices to monitor and control the behavior of physical processes. These digital devices, however, are susceptible to cyber and physical attacks, that may alter their functionality, and therefore the integrity of their measurements/actions. In practice, industrial control systems utilize simple control laws, which rely on various sensor measurements and algorithms which are expected to operate normally. To reduce the impact of a potential failure, operators may deploy redundant components; this however may not be useful, e.g., when a cyber attack at a PLC component occurs. In this work, we address the problem of reducing vulnerability to cyber-physical attacks in water distribution networks. This is achieved by augmenting the graph which describes the information flow from sensors to actuators, by adding new connections and algorithms, to increase the number of redundant cyber components. These, in turn, increase the \textitcyber-physical security level, which is defined in the present paper as the number of malicious attacks a CPS may sustain before becoming unable to satisfy the control requirements. A proof-of-concept of the approach is demonstrated over a simple WDN, with intuition on how this can be used to increase the cyber-physical security level of the system.

URLhttps://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8434713
DOI10.1109/CySWater.2018.00011
Citation Keynicolaou_reducing_2018