Cyber-physical Systems Infrastructure Research Articles

Election-based optimization algorithm with deep learning-enabled false data injection attack detection in cyber-physical systems

<abstract> <p>Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are affected by cyberattacks once they are more connected to cyberspace. Advanced CPSs are highly complex and susceptible to attacks such as false data injection attacks (FDIA) targeted to mislead the systems and make them unstable. Leveraging an integration of anomaly detection methods, real-time monitoring, and machine learning (ML) algorithms, research workers are developing robust frameworks to recognize and alleviate the effect of FDIA. These methods often scrutinize deviations from predictable system behavior, using statistical analysis and anomaly detection systems to determine abnormalities that can indicate malicious activities. This manuscript offers the design of an election-based optimization algorithm with a deep learning-enabled false data injection attack detection (EBODL-FDIAD) method in the CPS infrastructure. The purpose of the EBODL-FDIAD technique is to enhance security in the CPS environment via the detection of FDIAs. In the EBODL-FDIAD technique, the linear scaling normalization (LSN) approach can be used to scale the input data into valuable formats. Besides, the EBODL-FDIAD system performs ensemble learning classification comprising three classifiers, namely the kernel extreme learning machine (KELM), long short-term memory (LSTM), and attention-based bidirectional recurrent neural network (ABiRNN) model. For optimal hyperparameter selection of the ensemble classifiers, the EBO algorithm can be applied. To validate the enriched performance of the EBODL-FDIAD technique, wide-ranging simulations were involved. The extensive results highlighted that the EBODL-FDIAD algorithm performed well over other systems concerning numerous measures.</p> </abstract>

A conversation with Heena Rathore

Ubiquity's senior editor Dr. Bushra Anjum chats with Dr. Heena Rathore, assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Texas State University, on how cyber-physical systems (CPS) are inherently similar to humans in their reliance upon sensing their environments and making decisions. They further discuss how this similarity motivates the exploration of novel AI algorithms inspired by the principles of cognition and neuroscience to ensure the security of critical CPS infrastructure, such as IoT networks, medical devices, and connected vehicles.

“MystifY”: A proactive Moving-Target Defense for a resilient SDN controller in Software Defined CPS

The recent devastating mission Cyber–Physical System (CPS) attacks, failures, and the desperate need to scale and to dynamically adapt to changes, revolutionized traditional CPS to what we name as Software Defined CPS (SD-CPS). SD-CPS embraces the concept of Software Defined (SD) everything where CPS infrastructure is more elastic, dynamically adaptable and online-programmable. However, in SD-CPS, the threat became more immanent, as the long-been physically-protected assets are now programmatically accessible to cyber attackers. In SD-CPSs, a network failure hinders the entire functionality of the system. In this paper, we present MystifY, a spatiotemporal runtime diversification for Moving-Target Defense (MTD) to secure the SD-CPS infrastructure. In this paper, we relied on Smart Grid networks as crucial SD-CPS application to evaluate our presented solution. MystifY’s MTD relies on a set of pillars to ensure the SDN controller resiliency against failures and attacks. The 1st pillar is a grid-aware algorithm that optimally allocates the most suitable controller–deployment​ location in large-scale grids. The 2nd pillar is a special diversifier that dynamically relocates the controller between heterogeneously configured hosts to avoid host-based attacks. The 3rd pillar is a temporal diversifier that dynamically detours controller–workload between multiple controllers to enhance their reliability and to detect and avoid controller intrusions. Our experimental results showed the efficiency and effectiveness of the presented approach.

ADAPTIVE OPERATION MODEL FOR INTERIOR SMART LOGISTICS IN CYBER PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

Logistics operations are among the main activities in industrial production areas. Today, vehicles that are usually electric and manually operated by a driver are used to perform these operations. Logistics robots are an important alternative that can be used in this field, and their use in integration with cyber physical systems in industrial fields is increasingly common. The biggest advantage of the logistics robots is that they provide autonomous driving capabilities and optimum parameters for the entire system in accordance with industry 4.0 concept. In this study, an adaptive logistics robot system that can be integrated into the Cyber Physical System (CPS) system in an environment with cyber physical system infrastructure has been developed. In this context, positioning, path planning, multi-task allocation, energy management, task prioritization, optimization and obstacle avoidance issues are analyzed and simple solutions are proposed. The experiments have been carried out in eight different configurations and the average distance and energy costs have been improved by 5.1% and 6.6%, respectively.

Cyber Physical Systems Dependability Using CPS-IOT Monitoring.

Recently, vast investments have been made worldwide in developing Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) as solutions to key socio-economic challenges. The Internet-of-Things (IoT) has also enjoyed widespread adoption, mostly for its ability to add “sensing” and “actuation” capabilities to existing CPS infrastructures. However, attention must be paid to the impact of IoT protocols on the dependability of CPS infrastructures. We address the issues of CPS dependability by using an epidemic model of the underlying dynamics within the CPS’ IoT subsystem (CPS-IoT) and an interference-aware routing reconfiguration. These help to efficiently monitor CPS infrastructure—avoiding routing oscillation, while improving its safety. The contributions of this paper are threefold. Firstly, a CPS orchestration model is proposed that relies upon: (i) Inbound surveillance and outbound actuation to improve dependability and (ii) a novel information diffusion model that uses epidemic states and diffusion sets to produce diffusion patterns across the CPS-IoT. Secondly, the proposed CPS orchestration model is numerically analysed to show its dependability for both sensitive and non-sensitive applications. Finally, a novel interference-aware clustering protocol called “INMP”, which enables network reconfiguration through migration of nodes across clusters, is proposed. It is then bench-marked against prominent IoT protocols to assess its impact on the dependability of the CPS.

A System-level Behavioral Detection Framework for Compromised CPS Devices

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) play a significant role in our critical infrastructure networks from power-distribution to utility networks. The emerging smart-grid concept is a compelling critical CPS infrastructure that relies on two-way communications between smart devices to increase efficiency, enhance reliability, and reduce costs. However, compromised devices in the smart grid poses several security challenges. Consequences of propagating fake data or stealing sensitive smart grid information via compromised devices are costly. Hence, early behavioral detection of compromised devices is critical for protecting the smart grid’s components and data. To address these concerns, in this article, we introduce a novel and configurable system-level framework to identify compromised smart grid devices. The framework combines system and function call tracing techniques with signal processing and statistical analysis to detect compromised devices based on their behavioral characteristics. We measure the efficacy of our framework with a realistic smart grid substation testbed that includes both resource-limited and resource-rich devices. In total, using our framework, we analyze six different types of compromised device scenarios with different resources and attack payloads. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed framework is the first in detecting compromised CPS smart grid devices with system and function-level call tracing techniques. The experimental results reveal an excellent rate for the detection of compromised devices. Specifically, performance metrics include accuracy values between 95% and 99% for the different attack scenarios. Finally, the performance analysis demonstrates that the use of the proposed framework has minimal overhead on the smart grid devices’ computing resources.

Discrete game-theoretic analysis of defense in correlated cyber-physical systems

A cyber-physical system (CPS) is composed of a discrete number of cyber and physical components and subject to internal failures and external disruptions. The functionality of CPS therefore is determined not only by cyber and physical components but the adversary’s attacker strategy. We characterize the effect of cyber-physical interdependency on the CPS survival probability using a product-form function with cyber and physical exponential correlation coefficients. We model simultaneous and sequential discrete games between the provider and attacker on a CPS infrastructure to analyze its survivability and reinforcement strategy at Nash equilibrium. Our results show that the cyber and physical correlation coefficients can significantly affect CPS survival probability. In general, the provider’s cyber- (or physical-) reinforcement level increases as the cyber- (or physical-) attack level increases. In each of cyber and physical domains, the reinforcement level first increases then decreases in its own correlation coefficient, probability of successful component attacks, and maximum level of available resources, but decreases in the correlation coefficient of the other domain. We apply this game-theoretic analysis to a cloud computing infrastructure, and show that its residual capacity is relatively high when the attacker has no information about the distribution of servers. Also, a high level of survival probability does not necessarily lead to high utility.

Protecting Cyber Physical Systems Using a Learned MAPE-K Model

Industry 4.0 leverages on cyber-physical systems (CPSs) that enable different physical sensors, actuators, and controllers to be interconnected via switches and cloud computing servers, forming complex online systems. Protecting these against advanced cyber threats is a primary concern for future application. Cyberattackers can impair such systems by producing different types of cyber threats, ranging from network attacks to CPS controller attacks, which could impose catastrophic damage to CPS infrastructure, companies, governments, and even the general public. This paper proposes a learned monitor, analyze, plan, execute, and knowledge (MAPE-K) base model as a method for supporting self-adaptation for the CPSs, ensuring reliability, flexibility, and protection against cyber threats. The model aims to gauge normal behavior in an industry environment and generate alarms to alert users to any abnormalities or threats. In turn, our evaluation shows 99.55% accuracy in detecting cyber threats.

Smart Surveillance System using Background Subtraction Technique in IoT Application

This paper presents a development of a security system based on Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology, where an IoT device, Raspberry Pi has been used. In the developed surveillance system, a camera works as a sensor to detect motion, and automatically capture the video of the view of area where the motion is detected. The motion is detected by image processing techniques; background subtraction technique. The technique is applied by comparing two different captured images using Pi NoIR camera. The system can be controlled from anywhere using Telegram application, and users will receive alert message with video using the application. The user can also play a siren from anywhere once detecting suspicious object can access images and videos using Telegram application. This can frighten the thief if the crime is suspected in home or office. Users can also deactivate and activate the system from anywhere at any time using the Telegram. The functionality tests have been done to ensure the developed product can work properly. Besides, tests to identify a suitable video length to be transmitted to the user and to identify the adequate location of the security in order to minimize false detection as well as false alert have been performed. The project is an IoT-based which significantly in line with the Industrial Revolution 4.0, supporting the infrastructure of Cyber-Physical System.

Guest Editorial Special Issue on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems

A typical cyber-physical system (CPS) refers to a system that features a tight integration of computation, networking, and physical elements for interactions between cyber and physical spaces. The Internet of Things (IoT) is considered to be the networking infrastructure of CPS. Applications of CPS cover numerous smart-world research areas that our daily life depends upon, including smart transportation, smart electrical power grid, smart cities, smart medical systems, smart manufacturing systems, and others. While major research on improving the efficiency and reliability of CPS by using advanced information and communication technologies has been conducted, the risks of cyberspace security and privacy breaches in CPS need to be seriously investigated before a massive deployment of CPS technologies can or should be realized.

Automatic and Scalable Data Replication Manager in Distributed Computation and Storage Infrastructure of Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is a rising technology that utilizes computation and storage resources for sensing, processing, analysis, predicting, understanding of field-data, and then uses communication resources for interaction, intervene, and interface management, and finally provides control for systems so that they can inter-operate, evolve, and run in a stable evidence-based environment. There are two major demands when building the storage infrastructure for a CPS cluster to support above-mentioned functionalities: (1) high I/O and network throughput requirements during runtime, and (2) low latency demand for disaster recovery. To address challenges brought by these demands, in this paper, we propose a complete solution called AutoReplica - an automatic and scalable data replication manager in distributed computation and storage infrastructure of cyber-physical systems, using tiering storage with SSD (solid state disk) and HDD (hard disk drive). Specifically, AutoReplica uses SSD to absorb hot data and to maximize I/Os, and its intelligent replication scheme further helps to recovery from disaster. To effectively balance the trade-off between I/O performance and fault tolerance, AutoReplica utilizes the SSDs of remote CPS server nodes (which are connected by high speed fibers) to replicate hot datasets cached in the SSD tier of the local CPS server node. AutoReplica has three approaches to build the replica cluster in order to support multiple SLAs. AutoReplica automatically balances loads among nodes, and can conduct seamlessly online migration operation (i.e., migrate-on-write scheme), instead of pausing the subsystem and copying the entire dataset from one node to the other. Lastly, AutoReplica supports parallel prefetching from both primary node and replica node(s) with a new dynamic optimizing streaming technique to improve I/O performance. We implemented AutoReplica on a real CPS infrastructure, and experimental results show that AutoReplica can significantly reduce the total recovery time with slight overhead compared to the no replication cluster and traditional replication clusters.