Malicious attack design for cyber physical systems: a novel sparse sensor attack strategy

This paper investigates the stealthy sparse sensor attack design problem for a class of cyber physical systems equipped with state estimator and attack detector. First, a novel sparse sensor attack model is proposed to make the estimator track a target state trajectory which deviates from the original state. Second, an attack performance analysis strategy is provided for the adversary to select appropriate target transmission channels. Third, through transforming the attack design problem into an optimization problem, a specific algorithm, which generates a class of undetectable attacks altering the state estimate without being detected, is proposed. Compared with the existing sparse sensor attacks, the designed attacks can be injected into the systems from any time point even if the estimator knows the initial state. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to illustrate the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed conditions and methods.