Title: Quantitative impact analysis of application-level attacks on a robotic platform

Authors: Khalil M. Ahmad Yousef; Anas AlMajali; Bassam J. Mohd; Salah Abu Ghalyon

Addresses: Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The Hashemite University, P.O. Box 330127, Zarqa 13133, Jordan ' Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The Hashemite University, P.O. Box 330127, Zarqa 13133, Jordan ' Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The Hashemite University, P.O. Box 330127, Zarqa 13133, Jordan ' Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The Hashemite University, P.O. Box 330127, Zarqa 13133, Jordan

Abstract: Robots are important examples of cyberphysical systems. Typically, robots are battery powered, which are a potential target for cyber-physical attacks to drain batteries and reduce their lifespan. When the battery is drained, the robot is not available and results in denial-of-service. Hence, robotic security and operation duration are fundamental requirements. The main objective of this paper is to provide an impact-based quantitative security risk assessment of three application level attacks targeting a well-known mobile robot platform that is called the PeopleBot™. The novelty of our work is that we successfully drained a fully-charged robot battery using application level attacks that include exhausting the computing resources of the robot. The attacks cause a reduction in the robot availability time. The average availability time from the performed attacks was reduced by 11.78%. We followed the adversarial risk assessment template provided in NIST. Finally, some mitigation strategies for the performed attacks were suggested.

Keywords: cyber-physical security; robot availability; attacks; vulnerability; risk assessment; PeopleBot.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2022.123846

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2022 Vol.14 No.4, pp.388 - 412

Received: 24 Apr 2021
Accepted: 08 Aug 2021
Published online: 04 Jul 2022 *

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