Stealthy Local Covert Attacks on Cyber-Physical Systems

In cyber-physical systems (CPS), the networked structure not only enhances the accessibility of data, but also introduces the risk of cyber attacks. The stealthy attacks that are undetected by the monitoring system, are the most dangerous type of cyber attacks. In this article, we introduce a new attack strategy to call attention to the problem of stealthy cyber attacks on CPS. The proposed attack scenario does not require access to all control input signals and sensor output signals, so it needs fewer disruption resources and is called a local covert attack. We show that the local covert attack can be made completely stealthy by applying the decoupling technique or by combining the basic idea of a covert attack and a zero-dynamics attack. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the stealthiness of the proposed local covert attacks.