posted on 2015-05-01, 00:00authored byBruce Debruhl
Advances in computing, communications, and sensing have enabled exciting opportunities for large scale applications of cyber-physical systems (CPS) to energy, transportation, healthcare, and defense. All of these services support critical applications, making CPS security crucial. For example, an attack against the smart-grid, or a power grid enhanced with CPS, may result in devastating regional blackouts. Fortunately, the technologies that enable CPS allows us to design attack and defense strategies leveraging robust sensing and actuation. In this thesis, we explore the interaction of two adversarial players with a shared cyberphysical system. We investigate how a player with limited information about the CPS or their opponent chooses an attack or defense. In particular, we explore the following question: how is an agent’s strategy affected by the amount of knowledge they have about the CPS they interact with and their opponent’s strategy? We consider various scenarios to explore this problem including: an agent that interacts with a known system and known opponent, an agent that interacts with a known system and an opponent with assumed behavior, an agent that interacts with a known system and an unknown opponent, and an agent that interacts with a known opponent and a partially known system. For each of these scenarios we provide a proof-of-concept attack or defense to demonstrate security challenges and opportunities. We also introduce other scenarios based on system and opponent knowledge levels that demonstrates exciting future research opportunities.