Comparison of corrupted sensor data detection methods in detecting stealthy attacks on cyber-physical systems

Effectiveness of seven methods for detecting stealthy attacks on Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) was investigated using an experimental study. The Amigobot robot was used as the CPS. The experiments were conducted in simulation as well as on the physical robot. Three types of stealthy attacks were implemented: surge, bias, and geometric. Two variations of Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) method for detecting attacks were evaluated: partial and full physics. Four attack scenarios were implemented. Results from the experiments indicate that stealthy attacks could remain undetected by the CUSUM methods for some attack scenarios. In addition to the CUSUM-based methods, a set of five methods to complement CUSUM were implemented and their effectiveness assessed. While the additional methods do improve the effectiveness of CUSUM-based methods, some attacks remained undetected regardless of which method, or a combination of methods, was used for detection due to the amount of variation in sensor measurements between different runs in simulation and in the physical robot.