A Time-Series Self-Supervised Learning Approach to Detection of Cyber-physical Attacks in Water Distribution Systems

Water Distribution System (WDS) threats have significantly grown following the Maroochy shire incident, as evidenced by proofed attacks on water premises. As a result, in addition to traditional solutions (e.g., data encryption and authentication), attack detection is being proposed in WDS to reduce...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Haitham Mahmoud, Wenyan Wu, Mohamed Medhat Gaber
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-01-01
Series:Energies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/3/914
Description
Summary:Water Distribution System (WDS) threats have significantly grown following the Maroochy shire incident, as evidenced by proofed attacks on water premises. As a result, in addition to traditional solutions (e.g., data encryption and authentication), attack detection is being proposed in WDS to reduce disruption cases. The attack detection system must meet two critical requirements: high accuracy and near real-time detection. This drives us to propose a two-stage detection system that uses self-supervised and unsupervised algorithms to detect Cyber-Physical (CP) attacks. Stage 1 uses heuristic adaptive self-supervised algorithms to achieve near real-time decision-making and detection sensitivity of 66% utilizing Boss. Stage 2 attempts to validate the detection of attacks using an unsupervised algorithm to maintain a detection accuracy of 94% utilizing Isolation Forest. Both stages are examined against time granularity and are empirically analyzed against a variety of performance evaluation indicators. Our findings demonstrate that the algorithms in stage 1 are less favored than those in the literature, but their existence enables near real-time decision-making and detection reliability. In stage 2, the isolation Forest algorithm, in contrast, gives excellent accuracy. As a result, both stages can collaborate to maximize accuracy in a near real-time attack detection system.
ISSN:1996-1073