Information-Theoretic Security in Stochastic Control Systems

Infrastructural systems such as the electricity grid, healthcare, and transportation networks today rely increasingly on the joint functioning of networked information systems and physical components, in short, on cyber-physical architectures. Despite tremendous advances in cryptography, physical-la...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the IEEE 2015-10, Vol.103 (10), p.1914-1931
Main Authors: Venkitasubramaniam, Parv, Yao, Jiyun, Pradhan, Parth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communication system security
Control systems
Cybersecurity
Data encryption
Electricity distribution
Information security
Monitoring
Network security
Physical layer
Security
Smart meters
Stochastic processes
Telecommunication services
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Infrastructural systems such as the electricity grid, healthcare, and transportation networks today rely increasingly on the joint functioning of networked information systems and physical components, in short, on cyber-physical architectures. Despite tremendous advances in cryptography, physical-layer security and authentication, information attacks, both passive such as eavesdropping, and active such as unauthorized data injection, continue to thwart the reliable functioning of networked systems. In systems with joint cyber-physical functionality, the ability of an adversary to monitor transmitted information or introduce false information can lead to sensitive user data being leaked or result in critical damages to the underlying physical system. This paper investigates two broad challenges in information security in cyber-physical systems (CPSs): preventing retrieval of internal physical system information through monitored external cyber flows, and limiting the modification of physical system functioning through compromised cyber flows. A rigorous analytical framework grounded on information-theoretic security is developed to study these challenges in a general stochastic control system abstraction-a theoretical building block for CPSs-with the objectives of quantifying the fundamental tradeoffs between information security and physical system performance, and through the process, designing provably secure controller policies. Recent results are presented that establish the theoretical basis for the framework, in addition to practical applications in timing analysis of anonymous systems, and demand response systems in a smart electricity grid.
ISSN:0018-9219
1558-2256
DOI:10.1109/JPROC.2015.2466089