Hierarchical Flow Model-Based Impact Assessment of Cyberattacks for Critical Infrastructures

Critical infrastructures (CIs) are essential for the national security, economy, and public safety, whose protection against cyberattacks has become the focus of significant attention. Impact assessment plays an important role in this protection, which provides real-time situations for security managers. The assessment of CIs not only need to analyze the cyberattack's impact on any specific station, but also to consider the spreading process of the negative impact. However, few research in this domain consider the above two aspects simultaneously due to the complexity of CIs and their operation. To tackle this problem, a hierarchical flow model (HFM)-based impact assessment is presented. In this approach, a novel HFM method is proposed to describe a system from a function system perspective, which combines a flow model and hierarchical knowledge. By using this method, a CI model which considers cyber-physical interaction within a station, dependence among stations, and the topological structure of the physical network is established. Next, based on the CI model, an impact assessment is proposed to quantify the loss which is caused by the impact spreading within the CI network. Finally, case studies on a gas supply system are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.