Vulnerabilities of Control Systems in Internet of Things Applications

In this paper, we present some initial results about vulnerability of control systems that can be used in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Up to our best knowledge, this paper is the first study about vulnerability of applied control systems in general, and especially in the IoT environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine fundamentals of linear control systems and consider vulnerability of its main features and concepts used in IoT applications under potential malicious attacks. We examine vulnerabilities of system stability, controllability, observability, design of feedback loops, and design and placement of sensors and controllers (actuators). The detailed study is limited to the most important vulnerability issues in time-invariant, unconstrained, deterministic, and linear physical systems. Several interesting and motivating examples are provided. We have outlined also some basic vulnerability studies for time-invariant nonlinear unconstrained systems, and indicate that such a study is particularly needed for distributed parameter systems that are very prone to outside physical and cyber-attacks.