Exploring Security Challenges and Detection in Cyber Physical Systems

This report provides an overview of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and delves into the security challenges they face, with a particular focus on side-channel attacks. It highlights how CPS, similar to IoT, integrates computational and physical elements, making them vulnerable to attacks exploiting weaknesses such as power consumption and electromagnetic leaks. The report categorizes side-channel attacks into cache, timing, power monitoring, and electromagnetic attacks. Furthermore, it discusses existing technologies like cryptographic devices and noise jamming for detecting and preventing these attacks, emphasizing the importance of countermeasures due to the increased vulnerability of data in CPS environments. The report concludes by underscoring the transdisciplinary nature of CPS and their applications in various fields, offering a concise overview of a critical security concern and potential solutions. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and resources for students.

Running head: CYBER PHYSICAL SYSTEMS
Cyber Physical Systems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Security Challenge of Cyber Physical Systems.....................................................................2
Existing Technology for Detection and Prevention of Identified Security Challenge...........3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
A CPS or cyber physical system is a significant mechanism, which is being controlled
and monitored by certain computer based algorithms. This type of system is majorly
integrated with the Internet connection as well as its users (He et al. 2016). Within such cyber
physical systems, the physical and even the software elements are being intertwined, where
every element is operating on various temporal and spatial scales and hence exhibiting
distinctive behavioural modalities. The following report outlines a brief discussion on one
security challenge within the modern CPS. Existing technology for detection and prevention
of such challenge will be provided here.
Discussion
Security Challenge of Cyber Physical Systems
CPS is quite similar to IoT or internet of things and they share same basic
architecture. This type of system eventually presents a high combination as well as
coordination within computational and physical elements. Various computational resources
like local storage and processing capability are being considered in these cyber physical
systems (Lee, Bagheri & Kao 2015). Numerous communication mechanisms like Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, EDGE and 4Gare used for interconnection of devices to other devices and Internet
connectivity. Internet of Things even consider the high level programming languages like
Java, C#, JavaScript and many more for the core purpose of allowing rapid development of
mobile CPS node software.
One of the most important and significant security challenges for the cyber physical
systems that is extremely vital to be eradicated on time is side channel attack. This type of
side-channel attack is a specific kind of attack, which is on the basis of the core information,
that is obtained from subsequent deployment of computerized system and the weaknesses are

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removed. The power consumption, sound, electromagnetic leaks and timing information
could be provided for the attackers so that they could easily exploit them (Pasqualetti, Dörfler
& Bullo 2013). Some of the side-channel attacks need core technical information of every
internal operation of systems. However, others like differential power-analysis are extremely
efficient than black-box attacks. Due to the increase of applications of Web 2.0 as well as
SaaS or software as a service, a higher chance of the probability of side channel attacks have
also raised over the web. This is done in spite of the fact that transmissions within a server
and a browser are being encrypted.
In cyber physical systems, there could be several attempts for breaking a crypto
system either by misleading or by forcing people with legal access. However, such attempts
are not termed as side-channel attacks. The general sub divisions of side channel attacks are
as follows:
i) Cache Attacks: The first and the foremost attack class is cache attack. It is based on
the ability of an attacker for monitoring the cache accesses that are made by victim within a
CPS as in virtual environment (Monostori, 2014).
ii) Timing Attack: Such attacks are mainly based on the measurement of how much
time do several computations undertake for performing.
iii) Power Monitoring Attacks: Such attacks eventually make use of the varying
power-consumption by hardware while computing.
iv) Electromagnetic Attacks: These types of attacks on the leaked electro magnetic
radiation that could directly give plain texts and any other data.
Existing Technology for Detection and Prevention of Identified Security Challenge
The side channel attack in cyber physical systems could be easily identified as well as
prevented with the help of an existing technology of cryptographic devices (Jazdi 2014).

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Although, the side-channel attack utilizes physical features of cryptographic devices for
finding out the cryptographic algorithm as well as secret key. There are some distinctive
forms of randomization of the cipher text, which is mainly responsible for transforming the
data in such a manner that could be undone even after decryption is being executed. Since
CPS is a type of IoT, it is quite important to find counter measures for side channel attacks as
vulnerability of data is much higher than normal (Mitchell & Chen 2014). Jamming of
entitled channel with noise is the next important technique for preventing from side channel
attacks.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that cyber physical systems
interact with one another in various ways, which change in context. The most prominent
examples of cyber physical systems are smart grid, process control system, autonomous
automobile system, robotics system, medical monitoring and many more. Transdisciplinary
approaches are involved in CPS and thus embedded systems are considered in the case. The
above provided report has clearly outlined one security challenge for CPS and the method of
detecting and preventing it.

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References
He, H., Maple, C., Watson, T., Tiwari, A., Mehnen, J., Jin, Y. & Gabrys, B. (2016) The
security challenges in the IoT enabled cyber-physical systems and opportunities for
evolutionary computing & other computational intelligence. In: IEEE Congress on
Evolutionary Computation (CEC). Vancouver, BC. pp. 1015-1021. DOI:
10.1109/CEC.2016.7743900
Jazdi, N. (2014, May). Cyber physical systems in the context of Industry 4.0. In 2014 IEEE
international conference on automation, quality and testing, robotics (pp. 1-4). IEEE. DOI:
10.1109/AQTR.2014.6857843
Lee, J., Bagheri, B., & Kao, H. A. (2015). A cyber-physical systems architecture for industry
4.0-based manufacturing systems. Manufacturing letters, 3, 18-23. DOI:
10.1016/j.mfglet.2014.12.001
Mitchell, R., & Chen, I. R. (2014). A survey of intrusion detection techniques for cyber-
physical systems. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 46(4), 55. DOI: 10.1145/2542049
Monostori, L. (2014). Cyber-physical production systems: Roots, expectations and R&D
challenges. Procedia Cirp, 17, 9-13. DOI: 10.1016/j.procir.2014.03.115
Pasqualetti, F., Dörfler, F., & Bullo, F. (2013). Attack detection and identification in cyber-
physical systems. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 58(11), 2715-2729. DOI:
10.1109/TAC.2013.2266831