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Attack-resilient state estimation with intermittent data authentication

Publication ,  Journal Article
Khazraei, A; Pajic, M
Published in: Automatica
April 1, 2022

Network-based attacks on control systems may alter sensor data delivered to the controller, effectively causing degradation in control performance. As a result, having access to accurate state estimates, even in the presence of attacks on sensor measurements, is of critical importance. In this work, we analyze performance of resilient state estimators (RSEs) when any subset of sensors may be compromised by a stealthy attacker. Specifically, we consider systems with the well-known l0-based RSE and two commonly used sound intrusion detectors (IDs). For linear time-invariant plants with bounded noise, we define the notion of perfect attackability (PA) when attacks may result in unbounded estimation errors while remaining undetected by the employed ID (i.e., stealthy). We derive necessary and sufficient PA conditions, showing that a system can be perfectly attackable even if the plant is stable. While PA can be prevented with the use the standard cryptographic mechanisms (e.g., message authentication) that ensure data integrity under network-based attacks, their continuous use imposes significant communication and computational overhead. Consequently, we also study the impact that even intermittent use of data authentication has on RSE performance guarantees in the presence of stealthy attacks. We show that if messages from some of the sensors are even intermittently authenticated, stealthy attacks could not result in unbounded state estimation errors.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Automatica

DOI

ISSN

0005-1098

Publication Date

April 1, 2022

Volume

138

Related Subject Headings

  • Industrial Engineering & Automation
  • 49 Mathematical sciences
  • 46 Information and computing sciences
  • 40 Engineering
  • 09 Engineering
  • 08 Information and Computing Sciences
  • 01 Mathematical Sciences
 

Citation

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Khazraei, A., & Pajic, M. (2022). Attack-resilient state estimation with intermittent data authentication. Automatica, 138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2021.110035
Khazraei, A., and M. Pajic. “Attack-resilient state estimation with intermittent data authentication.” Automatica 138 (April 1, 2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2021.110035.
Khazraei A, Pajic M. Attack-resilient state estimation with intermittent data authentication. Automatica. 2022 Apr 1;138.
Khazraei, A., and M. Pajic. “Attack-resilient state estimation with intermittent data authentication.” Automatica, vol. 138, Apr. 2022. Scopus, doi:10.1016/j.automatica.2021.110035.
Khazraei A, Pajic M. Attack-resilient state estimation with intermittent data authentication. Automatica. 2022 Apr 1;138.
Journal cover image

Published In

Automatica

DOI

ISSN

0005-1098

Publication Date

April 1, 2022

Volume

138

Related Subject Headings

  • Industrial Engineering & Automation
  • 49 Mathematical sciences
  • 46 Information and computing sciences
  • 40 Engineering
  • 09 Engineering
  • 08 Information and Computing Sciences
  • 01 Mathematical Sciences