Optimal Stealth Attack Strategy Design for Linear Cyber-Physical Systems

This article studies the problem of the optimal stealth attack strategy design for linear cyber-physical systems (CPSs). Virtual systems that reflect the attacker's target are constructed, and a linear attack model with varying gains is designed based on the virtual models. Unlike the existing optimal stealth attack strategies that are designed based on sufficient conditions, necessary and sufficient conditions are, respectively, established to achieve the optimal attack performance while maintaining stealth in virtue of the solvability of certain coupled recursive Riccati difference equations (RDEs). Under those conditions, an optimal stealth attack strategy is constructed by an offline algorithm. A simulation example is applied to verify the effectiveness of the presented technical scheme.