Stealthy Attacks With Historical Data on Distributed State Estimation

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of designing stealthy attacks on distributed estimation using historical data. The distributed sensors transmit innovations to remote state estimators and neighboring nodes, which attackers can intercept and tamper with. To bypass the configured false data detectors, the attack parameters must satisfy the stealthiness constraints. The determination of the optimal stealthy attack strategy is reformulated as a series of convex optimization problems. Additionally, a lower bound on the compromised estimation error covariance is derived, and analytical solutions for the suboptimal stealthy attack strategy that maximizes the bound are provided. These solutions are proven to be piecewise constant with smaller computational complexity. Finally, numerical simulations validate the theoretical results.