PDE-based Analysis of Automotive Cyber-Attacks in Imperfect Information Scenarios

This paper considers a class of cyber-attacks wherein an attacker has the ability to hack into a subset of vehicles driving on a highway, and inject subtle velocity changes in them. By performing such velocity changes, these vehicles (referred to as malicious vehicles) are able to manipulate the velocity/density profile of the non-malicious (normal) vehicles. The malicious and normal vehicles are modeled using a system of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). A control system is demonstrated, using which, the malicious vehicles are able to modulate the velocity/density profile of the normal vehicles, so as to track a reference profile, chosen by the malicious vehicles. The effects of imperfection in information available to the attacker is considered, and it is seen that if the level of imperfection exceeds a threshold, then the attacker's intent can be foiled. Simulation results are presented.