‘Known Secure Sensor Measurements’ for Critical Infrastructure Systems: Detecting Falsification of System State

Abstract

This paper describes a first investigation on a low cost and low false alarm, reliable mechanism for detecting manipulation of critical physical processes and falsification of system state. We call this novel mechanism Known Secure Sensor Measurements (KSSM). The method moves beyond analysis of network traffic and host based state information, in fact it uses physical measurements of the process being controlled to detect falsification of state. KSSM is intended to be incorporated into the design of new, resilient, cost effective critical infrastructure control systems. It can also be included in incremental upgrades of already installed systems for enhanced resilience. KSSM is based on known secure physical measurements for assessing the likelihood of an attack and will demonstrate a practical approach to creating, transmitting, and using the known secure measurements for detection.