Secure design for cloud control system against distributed denial of service attack

Abstract

Nowadays, the development of cloud computing has given power to the resource-constrained network control system (NCS) to out-source heavy computations to the cloud server. However, the development of Cloud Computing produced many security challenges regarding the cyber-physical connection between the cloud and control system. The connection between the control system and cloud server can be subjected to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack by an attacker to destabilize the NCS. In this paper, we will address this issue by building a secure mechanism for such systems. We will design a detection approach and a mitigation approach for better stable performance of NCS. To ensure the stability of NCS at the time of DDoS attack, we will also design a switching mechanism (SM) for cloud control system (CCS) when there are no more real time solutions available from the cloud. Finally, we will apply the proposed mechanism to an unmanned arial vehicle (UAV). Our simulation results show that the mechanism works well in stability and protection of NCS under DDoS attack.