Attack Simulation Framework

Cyber-Physical Systems span from industrial system to autonomous systems to Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSANs). CPSs are particularly prone to cyber-physical attacks. Since addressing all possible attacks is not viable, due to performance and economic reasons, it is vital to choose which attacks to address and which countermeasures to adopt. Hence, a quantitative analysis of attack impact is crucial to make an effective choice.

With Marco Tiloca, we have designed and implemented an attack simulation framework that allows us to describe attacks and quantitatively evaluate their effects on the application/network behavior and performance. The framework helps users to evaluate the impact of an attack, a crucial step in the attacks ranking activity. The framework provides a simple attack description language (ADL) that makes it possible to easily describe attacks, even as complex as a wormhole attack. Finally, the framework is based on an off-the-shelf simulator which is complemented by an event processor that intercepts and processes the simulator events according to the attack description. The original simulator is not modified.

The following two prototypes of the attack simulation framework have been built.

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Acknowledgements

Alessandro Pischedda
Francesco Racciatti

November 12, 2015