CPS: Small: Integrated Reconfigurable Control and Moving Target Defense for Secure Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract: Cyber-physical systems have been increasingly subject to cyber-attacks including code injection and code reuse attacks. With the tightly coupled nature of cyber components with the physical domain, these attacks have the potential to cause significant damage if critical applications such as automobiles are compromised. Instruction Set Randomization and Address Space Randomization have been commonly proposed to address these types of attacks. However, under current implementations attack attempts result in system crashing which is unacceptable in critical infrastructure applications. This work presents a control framework that prevents code injection and code reuse attacks through randomization techniques, but also integrates a detection, and recovery capability to maintain safe, reliable, and predictable system operation even under attack. The developed framework is demonstrated with an autonomous vehicle case study.

Explanation of Demonstration: Hardware-in-the-loop testbed for demonstrating integrated reconfigurable control and moving target defense for secure CPS. - Instruction set and address space randomization protect against code injection and code reuse attacks - Safe CPS operation using control switching