DETERMINATION OF PARAMETERS OF STEALTHY CYBER ATTACKS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE OBJECTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20535/kpisn.2025.1.322905Keywords:
Control Theory, Cybersecurity, Stealthy Attacks, Parameter IdentificationAbstract
Background. The integration of industrial control systems with modern network technologies has led to a significant increase in cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure. Detection and mitigation methods for such attacks remain underdeveloped, necessitating the advancement of mathematical frameworks capable of identifying attack parameters in such systems.
Objective. The objective of this study is to develop and investigate the parameters of a stealthy attack on a critical infrastructure control system. The attack serves as a testing tool for cybersecurity systems by evading standard fault detection mechanisms.
Methods. The industrial control system model is represented as a differential equation. Parameters of an additive attack on the control system are introduced. A fault detection criterion is defined. The problem of determining attack parameters is addressed using optimal state control methods, employing the Lagrangе functional and the gradient descent method.
Results. A new method and corresponding algorithm for identifying malicious control distortions using variational optimization and the fast gradient descent method are proposed. A computational experiment confirms the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Conclusions. A stealthy attack aimed at modifying control signals in critical infrastructure management systems, capable of bypassing standard fault detectors, is examined. The proposed method and algorithm can be utilized in penetration testing to assess the security of automated control systems in industrial critical infrastructure. The algorithm’s functionality has been validated through computational experiments.
References
Y. Hu, H. Li, H. Yang, Y. Sun, L. Sun, and Z. Wang, "Detecting stealthy attacks against industrial control systems based on residual skewness analysis," EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, vol. 74, pp. 1–14, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13638-019-1389-1
Y. Wang, M. C. Vuran, and S. Goddard, "Cyber-physical systems in industrial process control," ACM Sigbed Review, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–2, 2008, doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/1366283.1366295 .
A. M. Mohan, N. Meskin, and H. Mehrjerdi, "A comprehensive review of the cyber-attacks and cyber-security on load frequency control of power systems," MDPI Energies, vol. 13, no. 3860, pp. 1–33, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/15/3860 .
H. S. Sánchez, D. Rotondo, T. Escobet, V. Puig, and J. Quevedo, "Bibliographical review on cyber attacks from a control oriented perspective," Annual Reviews in Control, vol. 48, pp. 103–128, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arcontrol.2019.08.002 .
O. Novikov, M. Shreider, I. Stopochkina, M. Ilin, “Cyber Attacks Simulation for Modern Energy Facilities”, CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Selected Papers of the XXIII International Scientific and Practical Conference "Information Technologies and Security" (ITS 2023), vol.3887, pp. 35-49. [Online]. Available: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3887/ .
L. Alekseichuk, O. Novikov, A. Rodionov, and D. Yakobchuk, "Cyber security logical and probabilistic model of a critical infrastructure facility in the electric energy industry," Theoretical and Applied Cybersecurity, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 61–66, 2023, doi: https://doi.org/10.20535/tacs.2664-29132023.1.287365 .
M. Syfert, A. Ordys, J. Maciej Koscielny, P. Wnuk, J. Mozaryn, and K. Kukielka, "Integrated approach to diagnostics of failures and cyber-attacks in industrial control systems," MDPI Energies, vol. 15, no. 17, pp. 1–24, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/en15176212 .
A. A. Cardenas, S. Amin, B. Sinopoli, A. Giani, A. Perrig, and S. Sastry, "Challenges for securing cyber physical systems," DHS, July 2009. [Online]. Available: https://ptolemy.berkeley.edu/projects/chess/pubs/601.html .
Y. Mo and B. Sinopoli, "Secure control against replay attacks," in 47th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, Monticello, IL, USA, Sept. 30 – Oct. 2, 2009, pp. 911–918, doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/Allerton16076.2009 .
A. Cooper, A. Bretas, and S. Meyn, "Anomaly detection in power system state estimation: Review and new directions," MDPI Energies, vol. 16, no. 18, pp. 1–15, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/18/6678 .
A. Sztyber-Betley, M. Syfert, J. Maciej Koscielny, and Z. Gorecka, "Controller cyber-attack detection and isolation," MDPI Sensors, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 1–27, 2023, doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/s23052778 .
D. E. Kirk, Optimal Control Theory: An Introduction. Mineola, NY, USA: Dover Publications, Inc., 2004, p. 443. [Online]. Available: https://books.google.com.ua/books?id=fCh2SAtWIdwC&printsec=copyright&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false .
W. H. Ray, Advanced Process Control. New York, NY, USA: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981, p. 376. [Online]. Available: https://books.google.com.ua/books/about/Advanced_Process_Control.html?id=-7tTAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y .
A. P. Sage and C. C. White III, Optimum Systems Control. New Jersey, USA: Prentice-Hall, 1977, p. 413. [Online]. Available: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Optimum-systems-control%3A-by-A.-P.-Sage-and-C.-C.-Eslami/83d44a3e6cd41f834a99209a671a248dfef12634#citing-papers .
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Ірина Стьопочкіна, Олексій Новіков, Микола Ільїн, Микола Овчарук
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under CC BY 4.0 that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work
