On the Use of Fibonacci Sequences for Detecting Injection Attacks in Cyber Physical Systems

Cyber Physical Systems are characterized by a strong interaction among networking, sensing, and control functionalities. Moreover, the recent advent of Internet of Things extended their information sharing capability. However, the interaction between Internet and Cyber Physical Systems requires increased efforts for guaranteeing the security of connected systems. In the industrial field, the problem becomes more complex due to the need of protecting a large attack surface while guaranteeing system availability and real-time response to the detection of threats. In this contribution, we deal with the injection of tampered data into the communication channel with the aim of modifying the status of the physical system. To cope with this attack, we design a secure control system able to detect the injection of tampered data by coding the output of the measurement systems. The proposed approach is based on the use of permutation matrices, whose scheme varies upon a secret pattern obtained exploiting the Fibonacci p-sequences. The detection strategy is compliant with the time delay constraints typical of a Cyber Physical System. An analysis of the security performances of the proposed system is presented along with the experimental proof of its effectiveness.