Secure transmission mechanism for networked control systems under deception attacks

With the rapid developments in computer, communication and control technologies, the networked control systems (NCSs) have been a growing trend in industrial automation systems for the purposes of distributed management and control. This paper addresses the security issues of data transmitted in NCSs under deception attacks, especially confidentiality, integrity and authenticity. Deception attacks can deteriorate the system performance or even destabilize the system. To protect NCSs from them, a secure transmission mechanism is presented in this paper, which integrates the Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm, Message Digest (MD5) algorithm, and timestamp strategy. DES is used to encrypt and decrypt the data exchanged between the controller side and the plant side. The MD5 algorithm and the timestamp are applied to check the data integrity and authenticity. Practical experiments to control the speed of a DC motor through the Internet have been carried out to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approaches.