English

Time Constant: Actuator Fingerprinting using Transient Response of Device and Process in ICS

Cryptography and Security 2024-09-26 v1

Abstract

Command injection and replay attacks are key threats in Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). We develop a novel actuator fingerprinting technique named Time Constant. Time Constant captures the transient dynamics of an actuator and physical process. The transient behavior is device-specific. We combine process and device transient characteristics to develop a copy-resistant actuator fingerprint that resists command injection and replay attacks in the face of insider adversaries. We validated the proposed scheme on data from a real water treatment testbed, as well as through real-time attack detection in the live plant. Our results show that we can uniquely distinguish between process states and actuators based on their Time Constant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.16536,
  title  = {Time Constant: Actuator Fingerprinting using Transient Response of Device and Process in ICS},
  author = {Chuadhry Mujeeb Ahmed and Matthew Calder and Sean Gunawan and Jay Prakash and Shishir Nagaraja and Jianying Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.16536},
  year   = {2024}
}