Light-weight slow-rate attack detection framework for resource-constrained Industrial Cyber–Physical Systems

Abstract

Industrial Cyber–Physical Systems (ICPS) are heterogeneous computer systems interacting with physical processes in an industrial environment. The presence of numerous interconnected components poses significant security threats to ICPS. Slow-Rate Attacks (SRA), in which attackers attack a system constantly at low volumes, are difficult to detect for resource-constrained ICPS computers like programmable logic controllers (PLC). We propose an optimised light-weight active security framework for SRA detection based on Online Sequential Extreme Learning Machine (OSELM). We optimise the memory and space footprint of OSELM for deployment in resource-constrained ICPS. Additionally, a simple stratified k-fold cross training method improves the performance and accuracy of binary and multi-class SRA detection. Compared to existing methods, our technique requires less space and reduces attack detection time by at least 95%.