Identifying Near-Optimal Single-Shot Attacks on ICSs with Limited Process Knowledge

Abstract: Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) rely on insecure protocols and devices to monitor and operate critical infrastructure. Prior work has demonstrated that powerful attackers with detailed system knowledge can manipulate exchanged sensor data to deteriorate performance of the process, even leading to full shutdowns of plants. Identifying those attacks requires iterating over all possible sensor values, and running detailed system simulation or analysis to identify optimal attacks. That setup allows adversaries to identify attacks that are most impactful when applied on the system for the first time, before the system operators become aware of the manipulations. In this work, we investigate if constrained attackers without detailed system knowledge and simulators can identify comparable attacks. In particular, the attacker only requires abstract knowledge on general information flow in the plant, instead of precise algorithms, operating parameters, process models, or simulators. We propose an approach that allows single-shot attacks, i.e., near-optimal attacks that are reliably shutting down a system on the first try. The approach is applied and validated on two use cases, and demonstrated to achieve comparable results to prior work, which relied on detailed system information and simulations.