Guest Editors’ Introduction: Cyber-Physical Systems Security and Privacy

Abstract

During the past decade, several catch-phrases have been used to emphasize the increasing importance of cyber-physical systems (CPS) in our everyday life: Internet-of-Things, Internet-of-Everything, Smart-Cities, Smart-X, Intelligent-X, etc. All such systems, in their core, consist of networked computing (cyber) devices continuously interacting with the physical world. From fitness trackers and smart thermostats, to traffic light control and smart-grid devices, CPS have increased efficiency, enabled interesting applications and introduced major technological advancements. At the same time, due to their criticality, CPS have become a lucrative target for malicious actors. The wide deployment of CPS, as well as the increasing complexity of the underlying computing devices has increased the attack surface allowing a plethora of cyberattacks. The end-goal of the adversaries can be on the privacy side (e.g., leaking customer information), on the security side (e.g., causing a blackout), or both. Power and area constraints, as well as real-time requirements of CPS are limiting the defense capabilities of the computing devices.