CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Threat-Assessment Tools for Management-Coupled Cyber and Physical Infrastructures

Abstract:

This new CPS Synergy project is concerned with Management-Coupled Cyber and Physical Infrastructures (MCCPIs), which are infrastructures whose cyber- and physical- components are coupled by their wide-area management functions. The main objective of the project is to develop a framework and tool set for threat assessment for MCCPIs which acknowledges their cyber, physical, and human elements, and to apply these tools and methods in a case study of the air traffic management system. Three broad types of threats are considered: environmental-to-physical threats, cyber and physical co-threats, and human-in-the-loop threats. Our focus is on understanding the wide-area or holistic impacts of these threats.

Research will be conducted along three thrusts. First, a threat-assessment framework will be developed, via moment-linear modeling of MCCPIs; representations of threats in terms in terms of their measurement and actuation capabilities, trust level, and intelligence; and definition of impact metrics. Second, a suite of analytical tools for holistic threat assessment will be constructed, with three main functions: Target (identify critical vulnerabilities), Feature (understand what network characteristics lead to vulnerability/security), and Defend (determine effective defense locations and resource deployments). Third, the framework and tools will be applied for assessing threats to the wide-area management of the air traffic system, with a particular focus on severe-weather impacts, cyber- attacks, and fatigue-related errors of human managers.

The project is in its early stages. As an initial effort, the cyber threat assessment problem for the air traffic management system has been posed as a controllability problem (for sophisticated attacks) and robustness problem (for blunt attacks), for a layered network model. Some initial interactions with domain specialists have also been pursued.