Security in Cyber-Physical Networked Systems

ABSTRACT: A cyber-physical system (CPS) is a system that features a tight combination of, and coordination between, the system"s computational and physical elements. Today, a pre-cursor generation of cyber-physical systems can be found in areas as diverse as emerging and future combat systems, air-space-cyber activities, as well as smart buildings, bridges and other structures. CPS security must be fully understood and addressed before these types of systems can be fully trusted. Military CPS systems, in particular, are vulnerable to a variety of hostile RF attacks that include jamming, spoofing, and network intrusion. To improve robustness and security in CPS systems that utilize SATCOM as their wireless network, Azure Summit proposes to develop concepts and architectures for detecting, localizing, and mitigating RF attacks on the satellite communications portion of CPSs. Detection of these attacks is accomplished by analyzing the spatial signature of signals that arrive at the satellite and comparing them to pre-determined signatures. This Geo-Selective Authentication (GSA) enables the system to reject messages from rogue emitters that otherwise appear to be legitimate in every other way. BENEFIT: This effort will lead to improved security for military and commercial cyber-physical systems, particularly those that consist of a hybrid mixture of next-generation and legacy sensors and actuators.