Analytical Modelling of Cyber-physical Systems
Paul Tavolato
1
and Christina Tavolato-Wötzl
2
1
Institute of IT Security Research, UAS St. Pölten, Matthias-Corvinus-Straße 15, A-3100 St. Pölten, Austria
2
MeteoServe, Wagramer Straße 19, A-1220 Vienna, Austria
Keywords: Cyber-physical System, Anomaly Detection, Security, Analytical Modelling, Kinetic Theory.
Abstract: In connection with anomaly detection in cyber-physical systems, we suggest in this paper a new way of
modelling large systems consisting of a huge number of sensors, actuators and controllers. We base the
approach on analytical methods usually used in kinetic gas theory, where one tries to describe the overall
behaviour of a gas without looking at each molecule separately. We model the system as a multi-agent
network and derive predictions on the behaviour of the network as a whole. These predictions can then be
used to monitor the operation of the system. If the deviation between the predictions and the measured
attributes of the operational cyber-physical system is sufficiently large, the monitoring system can raise an
alarm. This way of modelling the normal behaviour of a cyber-physical system has the advantage over
machine learning methods mainly used for this purpose, that it is not based on the effective operation of the
system during a training phase, but rather on the specification of the system and its intended use. It will detect
anomalies in the system’s operation independent of its source – may it be an attack, a malfunction or a faulty
implementation.
1 INTRODUCTION
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are integrations of
physical processes with networks and computation
(Adepu et al., 2015). Embedded computing devices
sense, monitor, and control the physical processes
through networks, usually with feedback loops in
which physical processes affect computations and
vice versa (Lee, 2008). Cyber-physical systems are
used in various areas including industrial and
production systems, public infrastructure (Stouffer et
al., 2015) such as for electricity (Sridhar et al., 2012),
water, purification and transportation (Zhao et al.,
2013), as well as health care (Haque et al., 2014).
These systems often represent critical infrastructures,
which play an essential and critical role in our
interdependent society and economy.
Dependencies on cyber infrastructure in industrial
systems and open communication make them more
vulnerable to cyber-attacks and hence represent a
considerable amount of risk for our society. Most
CPSs in use today were developed to meet
availability and reliability requirements but not
security requirements, as security was not considered
an important aspect in a secluded IT infrastructure
strictly separated from other systems. This has
changed dramatically in the last years: the
introduction of IP-based technology and standard
computing devices into operational environments
made an end to this separation and opened points of
exposure and increased the attack surface of CPSs in
a way that cannot be neglected any more. Moreover,
the complexity of the systems is increasing rapidly as
they become smarter and use advanced technologies
as well as the number of devices incorporated in such
systems is growing rapidly. This is reflected by the
concerns about attacks on industrial control systems
that were recognized at the latest with the detection of
incidents such as Stuxnet (Falliere et al., 2011),
Dragonfly (Symantec, 2017), or the BlackEnergy-
borne power outage in 2015 (Lee et al., 2016). The
possibility of such advanced attacks on industrial
systems show the urgent need for counter-measures.
Traditional intrusion defense strategies for
common IT systems are often not applicable in smart
CPS environments. To ensure the protection of these
environments, certain security controls that monitor
the systems communications and operation in real-
time, or at least close-to-real-time, are needed. One
possibility for such defense systems is the
implementation of an anomaly detection system.
Tavolato, P. and Tavolato-Wötzl, C.
Analytical Modelling of Cyber-physical Systems.
DOI: 10.5220/0007704706850689
In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP 2019), pages 685-689
ISBN: 978-989-758-359-9
Copyright
c
2019 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
685
Anomaly detection systems consist of a formal model
of normal system behavior and a monitoring system
that compares in real time the actual behavior of the
system with this model. Too large deviations of the
system’s behavior from the model are distinguished
as anomalies and will raise an alarm. As of today the
formal systems used in connection with anomaly
detection systems are mostly of statistical nature:
outlier detection, cluster analysis, hidden Markov
models; few are of structural nature: neural networks,
association rules, syntactic pattern matching
(Chandola et al., 2009).
This paper suggests a new method for describing
the behavior model of a CPS. The idea is to model a
CPS in a way known from physics and similar to
equations used in kinetic theory. The macroscopic
behavior of a gas (or a liquid) is derived from the
behavior the interactions of the molecules it
consists of. For reason of the vast number of
molecules, it is not feasible to look at each molecule
individually. Kinetic theory overcomes that difficulty
by analytically deriving the macroscopic behavior of
the gas or liquid. The analogy used here is the fact
that a large CPS consists of a huge number of sensors,
actuators and PLCs, and can be modelled as a multi-
agent system. The components interact by
exchanging data over the network. An interaction is
the exchange of data between two agents. We want to
model the behavior of such multi-agent systems
without looking at each component individually.
In the area of information processing the idea of
modeling multi-agent systems analytically by
drawing analogies to physics has so far mainly been
used to study opinion dynamics in social networks
(Monica and Bergenti, 2018; Monica and Bergenti,
2016). Only for very specific problems in mobile
wireless networks, analytical models have been used
so far as in (Keung et al., 2010). The main difference
to applications in physics is contained in the rules that
guide the interactions of the components: while
molecules behave according to the laws of physics,
the interactions of components of a CPS are mainly
driven by the program logic of the PLC software. An
overview of kinetic theory can be found e.g. in
(Pareschi and Toscani, 2013), more advanced topics
are covered in (Bellouquid and Delitala, 2006).
2 MODELLING OUTLINE
We assume that every component of the CPS is an
agent in a multi-agent system. There is a set of
attributes (a vector) associated with each agent
representing its current state. Usually statements
about multi-agent systems are calculated by means of
simulations. In this paper, however, we introduce an
analytic point of view. This has the advantage that it
is independent of the simulation setup and will lead
to a more general model provided that the
hypotheses used to derive them are valid.
We have:
A set of components (agents) C
Each component is associated with a state
vector q that changes dynamically.
Components interact by exchanging
messages.
Interactions are determined by interaction
protocols that define the reactions on input
(either as a message from another component
or as an input from the outside).
Interactions occur when a component receives
a message from another component or from an
external source (input).
As we have three main different kinds of components,
we group them statically into three disjoint classes
C = S A PLC:
The class of sensors S
The class of actuators A
The class of programmed logic controllers
PLC
The interaction between the components can only
occur according to the topology of the network
interconnecting the components. This network is
modelled by a directed graph NW = (C,E); the
vertexes of the graph are the components and we
define the set of edges E between a sender vertex c
i
and a receiver vertex c
j
if c
i
can send a message to c
i
.
Usually the receiver changes its state upon receiving
a message. External inputs may induce state changes,
too. As a rule, the components of class S receive
external inputs and send messages to components of
class PLC; components of class PLC receive
messages from components of classes S and PLC and
send messages to components of class A and class
PLC; components of class A receive messages from
components of class PLC and may send messages to
external devices (like e.g. motors, or human
interfaces).
Furthermore, we assume that the system is large
(consists of many components), so it is not feasible to
look at the state of each component individually, but
the analysis of the system as a whole is interesting.
The goal is the study of the dynamics of specific
features of the system that characterize its normal
behaviour. The first step towards this goal is
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686
formulate functions that will predict the behaviour of
the system. This means to find a function that would
relate the state of a component of a class to its
changing over time. Time being a continuous variable
we have to define a density function of a class x:
f
x
(q,t)d’q (1)
Representing the number of agents of class x whose
states are in (q, q+dq) at time t >= 0.
The density function of the CPS as a whole can be
computed as:
f(q,t)d’q = f
x
(q,t)d’q (2)
for each of the three classes x.
The average state of the components of class x at
time t >= 0 can then be computed as
u
x
(t) =

 
(3)
where n
x
is the number of elements of class x and Q
is the set of all states. Moreover, we could compute a
weighted standard deviation.
The next step would be to define a balance
equation for the system. Such an equation must define
a collisional operator I
x
that accounts for all possible
interactions between the components of class x with
components of any other class s.
x
= Q
s,x
[f
x
, f
r
] =


(q
r
, t) (4)
by summing over all classes s. The term Q
s,x
[f
x
, f
r
]
depends on the interaction rules.
The definition of Q
s,x
[f
x
, f
r
] is the most
complicated part of the modelling. We assume that an
interaction consists of a component c
1
sending a
message to another component c
2
containing the
current state of c
1
and component c
2
replying with
another message (and may or may not send other
messages to other components). Both components
may update their state in the course of an interaction.
The interaction rules must account for external inputs
by containing flow terms that influence the
interaction. Interactions change the states of the two
neighbouring components that interact; more
precisely, they link pre-interaction states with post-
interaction states.
The interaction of components from classes S and
A are rather simple and do not need special attention.
Interactions from components of class S to
components of class PLC just change one (or more)
values in the state vector of the receiver. Interactions
from components of class PLC to components of
class A change a value in the state vector of the
receiver and may induce an external output.
Interactions of the components of class PLC are more
complex as they represent the computational logic of
the CPS, which is realised by the software running at
the component.
To define the interactions of the components from
class PLC, we must look at the pre- and post-
interaction states of these components; these
relationships define the interactions. We assume that
PLC software for CPS is developed in a rigorous way,
which means that the functions of the program are
designed by use of an at least semi-formal design
language (such as SysML or other UML derivatives)
or even a formal language (like TLA+ or PROMELA
or Uppaal) that allow for the definition of pre- and
post-conditions. These definitions can then be used to
define the interaction matrix Q
s,x
[f
x
, f
r
]. The pre- and
post-conditions define logical expressions on the state
attributes of the PLC-component. There are two
different kinds of conditions or constraints: those that
are given by the logic of the program (and are defined
by the afore-mentioned pre- and post-conditions) and
those given by the physical constraints on the external
inputs. The latter ones may define for example
restrictions on the development in time of the
function describing the external input (changes in
temperature for example cannot happen at arbitrary
speed).
Having defined the model, we can use it to predict
the normal behaviour of the CPS during operation and
compare the current state of the CPS with this
prediction. Deviations of the current state of the
system from the prediction are hints to anomalous
operations. Anomalous operation of the CPS can have
various reasons: wrong programming logic,
malfunction, erroneous user input, or cyber-attacks.
A classification of the reasons based on the
differences between predictions and actual behaviour
of the system, is difficult and not in the scope of this
paper.
3 APPLICATION TO CPS
We will present a very simple and (too) small
example to show the main idea of this modelling
approach: a conveyor belt where work pieces are
transported by the conveyor to and from a heating
chamber where they are heated to a predefined
temperature. The system consists of four optical
sensors, one temperature sensor, two actuators (one
for starting and stopping the belt, one for turning on
and off the heating chamber), and a PLC controlling
Analytical Modelling of Cyber-physical Systems
687
Figure 1: Experimental setup.
the setup. A more detailed description of the setup can
be found in (Eigner et al., 2018).
We have:
S = {s
o1
, s
o2
, s
o3
, s
o4
, s
temp
} is the set of sensors,
A = {a
m
, a
h
} is the set of actuators, and
PLC = {plc} is the PLC controlling the system.
The connections between these components are
shown in the interaction graph in figure 2.
Figure 2: Interaction graph.
The respective states are: for each optical sensor s
oi
it
is a binary value {0,1}, for the temperature sensor
s
temp
it is the last measured temperature value (a
positive decimal number within a predefined range).
For both actuators it is a binary value {0,1} meaning
on/off. For the plc it is a vector with the last received
measurements of the sensors and the states of the two
actuators together with an additional value referring
to the current state of the plc (idle, sending, receiving,
calculating).
An example of an interaction rule is:
Interaction: s
temp
is sending a measured temperature
value x to the plc
Pre-condition: the state of s
temp
is x
Post-conditions: the temperature attribute in the
state of the plc is x
if x is greater or equal than a fixed
threshold, the heating attribute is
0 (off)
if x is less than a fixed threshold
and s
o2
is 1 (a work piece is in the
heating chamber) the heating
attribute is 1 (on)
Other constraints concerning the input values can be
defined, too. For example, the temperature changes in
time cannot happen at an arbitrary speed. This is
captured by defining the maximum (and maybe
minimum) gradient of the temperature curve. By
applying the analytical model to this situation, we get
a description of the progression in time of the state of
the CPS as a whole.
4 DISCUSSION
The ideas described in this paper are still in a very
preliminary state and need further elaboration and
application to real large cyber-physical systems. This
is more a position paper that is supposed to present
some interesting ideas and to foster further
discussion.
So far, models of normal behaviour of a system
have been created by methods of machine learning:
Data is collected during assumed normal operation
and a machine-learning algorithm selects features and
“learns” the valid range of these features. The
advantage of our model over machine-learning
models is that it does not depend on a training phase
that might not cover all possible situations and were
one cannot really guarantee that the software works
properly in all situations or that there is no attack (or
effects of an attack) present during the training phase.
The analytical model, on the other side, starts with the
specification of the CPS and therefore encompasses
all situations defined by the software. This model
could even detect implementation errors.
s
o2
s
o1
s
o3
s
o4
s
temp
plc
a
o1
a
o1
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The main difficulty of the modelling process itself
lies within the construction of the interaction matrix.
In this paper, we assume that a rigorous specification
of the control programs containing pre- and post-
conditions is available (which in practice will not
always be the case). However, if such specifications
do exist in a formal notation, even an automatic or at
least semi-automatic generation of the interaction
matrix is possible. One can conclude this from the
code generation features present in specification and
design tools for software, which take the pre- and
post-conditions as input and transforms them into
another formal description (code). The maintenance
of the model, which is necessary if changes in the
configuration or the control programs occur, depends
on the formal specifications of the changes, too.
As mentioned above a lot of work is still to be
done to transfer the model to real practical
applications with a large number of components.
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