Security of networked control systems subject to deception attacks: a survey

A networked control system (NCS), which integrates various physical components by utilising communication networks, is a complex intelligent control system with high flexibility and reliability. It has been widely applied in various areas, such as power grids, intelligent transportation, and smart manufacturing. However, compared with traditional control systems, NCSs expose more extra vulnerabilities with the openness of communication networks, leading to long-term concerns for the security of NCSs against cyber attacks. This paper gives a survey in detail on recent developments on the security of NCSs subject to deception attacks from the two domains of information technology (IT) and system control, respectively. First, several security incidents reported in recent years are reviewed and a couple of prevailing cyber attacks are analysed. Besides, the results on IT security with respect to the protection-detection-reaction model are summarised. Then, from the domain of system control, the security issues on attack design, attack detection, secure state estimation and resilient control are surveyed in depth. Furthermore, several novel security topics from the combination of IT and system control are also discussed. Finally, several future research directions are presented on this topic.