DETERMINATION OF PARAMETERS OF STEALTHY CYBER ATTACKS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE OBJECTS

Background. The integration of industrial control systems with modern network technologies has led to a significant increase in cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure. Detection and mitigation methods for such attacks remain underdeveloped, necessitating the advancement of mathematical frameworks capable of identifying attack parameters in such systems. Objective. The objective of this study is to develop and investigate the parameters of a stealthy attack on a critical infrastructure control system. The attack serves as a testing tool for cybersecurity systems by evading standard fault detection mechanisms. Methods. The industrial control system model is represented as a differential equation. Parameters of an additive attack on the control system are introduced. A fault detection criterion is defined. The problem of determining attack parameters is addressed using optimal state control methods, employing the Lagrangе functional and the gradient descent method. Results. A new method and corresponding algorithm for identifying malicious control distortions using variational optimization and the fast gradient descent method are proposed. A computational experiment confirms the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Conclusions. A stealthy attack aimed at modifying control signals in critical infrastructure management systems, capable of bypassing standard fault detectors, is examined. The proposed method and algorithm can be utilized in penetration testing to assess the security of automated control systems in industrial critical infrastructure. The algorithm’s functionality has been validated through computational experiments.