CAREER: Game-Theoretic Analysis and Design for Cross-Layer Cyber-Physical System Security and Resilience

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Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are composed of multi-layer tightly integrated and highly interdependent components. An adversary can exploit the connections between the layers and launch an advanced persistent threat (APT) attack that is accomplished through a set of multi-stage stealthy and continuous hacking processes. Lessons learned from APT attacks have highlighted the fact that the design for perfect security is not always possible or prohibitively expensive, and hence resilience is an equally important mechanism that can complement the imperfect security. The standard analysis tools are insufficient to cope with the complexity of CPS and address the design of security and resilience mechanisms. To this end, the project aims to establish an integrated game-theoretic framework that adopts both reductionist and integrative approaches to engineer high-confidence CPS. The proposed research uses electric power systems and the cloud-enabled autonomous systems as two case studies to illustrate the designs of cyber defense strategies, resilience control mechanisms, and CPS security-aware contracts as the holistic cyber, physical, and human solution to for next-generation high-confidence infrastructure systems. The methodologies developed in the project establish an inter-disciplinary system science to conceptualize and design high-confidence CPS, and expedite the realization of CPS in a wide range of applications including transportation, industrial automation, and the power grid. The project first leverages system engineering principles to create game motifs or gamelets as building blocks and use them to compose a game of games or meta-game to model heterogeneous interactions of system components within the layers, across the layers, and with an adversary. As the perfect security at the cyberspace is not always possible, the project develops a resilient control mechanism to provide an alternative paradigm of protection by maintaining critical functions of the CPS and mitigating the impact of cyber insecurity on the physical layer. At the socio-economic level, the proposed CPS contracts aim to create an incentive-compatible secure provision of CPS services and mitigate security risks by incentivizing proper security management of the service providers and reducing the risks of the users. The research is fully integrated into the educational plan via the incorporation of new courses as well as the training of undergraduate and graduate students via mentoring, participation in test-bed development, special projects, and internships at research labs. The educational tool will foster this integration via new hands-on activities and demonstrations to a broader community. With the aim to increase the participation of high school students, particularly women and minority students in science and engineering, the outreach activities include annual high school student summer camp, girls-in-cybersecurity mentorship program, and the development of educational short films and documentaries.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.