A game theoretic study of attack and defense in cyber-physical systems

Cyber-physical systems encompass a wide range of systems such as sensor networks, cloud computing complexes, and communication networks. They require both the cyber and physical components to function, and hence are susceptible to attacks on either. A cyber-physical system is characterized by the physical space that represents physical components, and the cyber space that represents computations and communications. In this paper, we present a number of game theoretic formulations of attack and defense aspects of cyber-physical systems under different cost and benefit functions and different budgets of the attacker and defender. We discuss the outcomes of the underlying game under linear, negative exponential, and S-shaped benefit functions. We show that the outcomes are determined by the Nash Equilibria (which sometimes occur at budget limits), which in turn determine the system survival.