March 8, 2019: Invited Speaker Seminar: Quantifying the Capabilities of Attackers in Cyber-Physical Systems

Dr. Justin Ruths
University of Texas at Dallas

Friday, March 8, 2019 at 11:00 am
Room EV001.162

Abstract

While the modernization of control processes has led to unprecedented levels of productivity and efficiency, the coupling of the physical processes with an overarching cyber communication control layer opens up new vulnerabilities in such so called Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS).  While attacks can be viewed as unknown disturbances or faults in the system, the strategic nature of attacks raises altogether new research challenges. Chief among them is to quantify the effect that an attacker can have, which is determined by the dynamics of the system, the design of the controller and state estimator, and the methods used to defend against and detect attacks. In this talk I describe our work to quantify the impact that an attacker can have, including the prerequisite step to optimally tune attack detectors to a desired level of performance. I consider two major classes of static and dynamic detectors and show experimental results on scaled-industrial control systems.

Biography

Dr. Ruths received a B.S. in Physics from Rice University, M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering (Columbia University) and Electrical Engineering (Washington University in Saint Louis), and a Ph.D. in Systems Science and Applied Mathematics from Washington University in Saint Louis. In 2011, Dr. Ruths joined Singapore University of Technology and Design as a founding faculty member where he served as an assistant professor in Engineering Systems and Design for five years. As of August 2016 he is an assistant professor with appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Systems Engineering at University of Texas at Dallas. His research includes studying the fundamental properties of controlling networks, bilinear systems theory, attack detection methods for cyber-physical systems, and solving computational optimal control problems focused on neuroscience and quantum control applications.