A zonotopic characterization of cyber-physical system vulnerabilities

This article is concerned with the security of a cyber-physical system (CPS) against stealthy attacks. Stealthy attacks are malicious injections into sensor measurements without triggering detectors. We quantify the potential impact of stealthy attacks on system states using zonotopic reachable set. Then, a zonotopic framework is established to characterize the CPS vulnerabilities. Conditions for the existence of vulnerabilities are provided. Moreover, the level of such vulnerabilities is measured via one-sided Hausdorff distance. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.