Optimal Stealth Attack Strategy Design for Linear Cyber-Physical Systems

Area of Science:

• Cyber-Physical Systems Security
• Control Theory
• Network Security

Background:

• Linear cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are vulnerable to stealth attacks.
• Existing stealth attack strategies often rely on sufficient conditions, potentially limiting optimality.
• Designing optimal stealth attacks that balance performance and stealth is a critical challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design an optimal stealth attack strategy for linear CPSs.
• To establish necessary and sufficient conditions for achieving optimal stealth attack performance.
• To develop an offline algorithm for constructing the optimal stealth attack strategy.

Main Methods:

• Construction of virtual systems representing the attacker's target.
• Design of a linear attack model with varying gains based on virtual models.
• Establishment of necessary and sufficient conditions through the solvability of coupled recursive Riccati difference equations (RDEs).
• Development of an offline algorithm to compute the optimal stealth attack strategy.

Main Results:

• Necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal stealth attack design were established.
• An optimal stealth attack strategy was constructed under these conditions.
• The effectiveness of the proposed strategy was validated through a simulation example.

Conclusions:

• The developed strategy provides a method for optimal stealth attack design in linear CPSs.
• The use of necessary and sufficient conditions ensures both performance and stealth.
• The simulation results confirm the practical applicability of the proposed technical scheme.