Breakthrough: CPS-Security: Towards Provably Correct Distributed Attack-Resilient Control of Unmanned-Vehicle-Operator Networks

信息和通信技术系统易受网络攻击的固有脆弱性（例如，恶意软件）给网络物理系统（CPS）带来了巨大的安全风险。最近发生的一些事故证明了这一点。值得注意的是，目前CPS的分布式控制并不是真正的攻击弹性（确保任务完成，尽管攻击）。虽然可证明的弹性将大大提高CPS的可信度，但现有的防御措施相当特别，主要集中在攻击检测上。此外，虽然网络攻击已被广泛研究，但恶意软件对恶意软件的分布式控制却很少被研究。它的目的是调查可证明正确的分布式攻击弹性控制的CPS。该项目将侧重于CPS的代表性类别，即无人驾驶车辆运营商网络，其四个主要研究方向是：（1）开发分布式攻击弹性控制框架，以确保多个车辆在网络攻击和恶意软件攻击的情况下完成任务，（2）合成新颖的分布式攻击弹性控制算法以处理网络攻击，（3）设计用于检测对车辆的恶意软件攻击的估计算法，以及计算效率高的算法，其允许干净的车辆避免与被恶意软件危害的车辆碰撞，及（4）验证拟议分布式攻击的成本效益-弹性控制框架通过一个原则性的系统评估计划。研究结果深刻影响CPS安全的各种工程学科以外的无人驾驶车辆运营商网络，包括智能电网，智能建筑和智能交通系统。拟议的研究是跨学科的，涉及安全，控制，分布式算法和机器人之间的相互作用。这将为STEM领域的高中、本科和研究生提供跨越传统学科界限的教育和培训机会。

Inherent vulnerabilities of information and communication technology systems to cyber-attacks (e.g., malware) impose significant security risks to Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). This is evidenced by a number of recent accidents. Noticeably, current distributed control of CPS is not really attack-resilient (ensuring task completion despite attacks). Although provable resilience would significantly lift the trustworthiness of CPS, existing defenses are rather ad-hoc and mainly focus on attack detection. In addition, while network attacks have been extensively studied, resilient-to-malware distributed control has been rarely investigated.This project aims to bridge the gap. It aims to investigate provably correct distributed attack-resilient control of CPS. The project will focus on a representative class of CPS, namely unmanned-vehicle-operator networks, and its four main research thrusts are: (1) The development of a distributed attack-resilient control framework to ensure task completion of multiple vehicles despite network attacks and malware attacks, (2) The synthesis of novel distributed attack-resilient control algorithms to deal with network attacks, (3) The design of estimation algorithms to detect malware attacks on vehicles, and computationally efficient algorithms which allow clean vehicles to avoid the collision with the vehicles compromised by malware, and (4) The validation of the cost-effectiveness of the proposed distributed attack-resilient control framework via a principled systematic evaluation plan.The research findings profoundly impact CPS security of a variety of engineering disciplines beyond unmanned-vehicle-operator networks, including smart grid, smart buildings and intelligent transportation systems. The proposed research is interdisciplinary and involves interactions among security, control, distributed algorithms and robotics. This will lead to educational and training opportunities that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries for high-school, undergraduate and graduate students in STEM.