Visible to the public CRII: CPS SaTC: Securing Smart Cyberphysical Systems against Man-in-the-Middle AttacksConflict Detection Enabled

Project Details

Performance Period

Jul 01, 2016 - Jun 30, 2018

Institution(s)

Ohio State University

Award Number


Cyber-physical systems have increasingly become top targets for hackers around the world. We are also seeing proliferation of internet-connected critical infrastructures that allow for easy monitoring, visualization, and control. In February 2013, US president signed an executive order "Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity" that underscores the urgent need for securing such critical infrastructure against malicious attacks. Accordingly, this project is developing mathematical tools and approaches to design secure communication protocol in tandem with smart control algorithms to secure cyber-physical systems. The PI is leveraging research in network security and optimization to devise the algorithms, which optimize system performance and provides immunity against a wide class of cyber-attacks. The PI and his students are also creating a testbed on which the designed algorithms will be tested. The broader impact of the project is to introduce novel mathematical methods for designing secure systems and form new collaboration cutting across various disciplines. The project is also training a graduate student and two undergraduate students, who are working on the project. Some part of the project will be included as case studies in future undergraduate classes. Further, the project aims at increasing the awareness about cybersecurity of critical infrastructures among next generation of engineers and scientists.

This is among the first projects to extensively investigate the joint design of encryption-decryption and optimal control strategies. The key difficulties in the analyses are: (i) the dynamics of the control system; (ii) uncertainties due to exogenous factors; and (iii) the delays in the information transfer due to encryption-decryption algorithms and the real-time operating systems. Using the foundational theory of decentralized optimal control, cryptography, network security, and game theory, the PI is designing encryption-decryption-control strategies for large-scale infrastructures. Due to inherently dynamic nature of the control system, the cryptographic key used for encrypting the data is changed dynamically to reduce the possibility of leakage of information to the adversary. Further, if a controller senses tampering of data, then it acts in a manner that guarantees system stability and performance. These algorithms take into account (i) errors introduced in the channel due to attacks, (ii) delays due to encryption-decryption protocol, and (iii) real-time communication and computational constraints imposed by real-time operating systems. The algorithms thus designed are expected to be resilient to attacks and will be able to adapt itself to changing system parameters.