LAKELAND, Fla. 鈥� IM体育官网 researchers are using newly invented attacks to improve the security and resiliency of cyber-physical systems (CPS), such as autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and power systems.
As today鈥檚 CPS evolve and become more complex, they also grow increasingly more vulnerable to attacks. Dr. Arman Sargolzaei, assistant professor of electrical engineering, has been awarded a grant from Cyber IM体育官网 to research this imminent threat by defining those weaknesses, and designing stronger systems against different types of threats.
One of the possible attacks is called Time Delay Switched (TDS) and consists of a hacker inserting a time delay into a networked control system. In the case of autonomous vehicles, Sargolzaei said this could affect the critical immediacy in which controllers receive information, impacting sensor function and potentially leading to accidents.
鈥淭hese attacks represent major safety issues in the future,鈥� said Sargolzaei. 鈥淚f your bank account is hacked, that causes serious financial problems. But if your autonomous vehicle is hacked, we could be talking about life-threatening consequences.鈥�
The idea of TDS attack was invented by Sargolzaei and his collaborators, and there is a patent on ways to detect and respond to it. Another possible attack being used to test the CPS is called False Data Injection. Part of the project creates a Random Attack Generator that would combine these two types of attacks, to generate many possibilities of intrusions to the system.
鈥淗ackers might use these new kinds of attacks in the future and we don鈥檛 want to wait for that to happen to then figure out what to do,鈥� said Sargolzaei. 鈥淲e need to be creative on how we can get ahead of them.鈥�
Sargolzaei said the research is also part of IM体育官网 Poly鈥檚 Advanced Mobility Institute鈥檚 (AMI) efforts to develop and test autonomous vehicle technology in the state.
鈥淐yber-attacks in general are a big problem, but the focus is usually on cybersecurity, more on the software side of things,鈥� said Sargolzaei. 鈥淏ut when it鈥檚 about the security of cyber-physical systems, we鈥檙e talking directly about people鈥檚 safety.鈥�
The research project has the collaboration of Dr. Navid Khoshavi, assistant professor of computer science at IM体育官网 Poly, and Dr. Kan K. Yen, professor of electrical engineering at IM体育官网 International University.
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