Revealing stealthy attacks in control systems

In this paper the problem of revealing stealthy data-injection attacks on control systems is addressed. In particular we consider the scenario where the attacker performs zero-dynamics attacks on the system. First, we characterize and analyze the stealthiness properties of these attacks for linear time-invariant systems. Then we tackle the problem of detecting such attacks by modifying the system's structure. Our results provide necessary and sufficient conditions that the modifications should satisfy in order to detect the zero-dynamics attacks. The results and proposed detection methods are illustrated through numerical examples.