An Exploratory Analysis of Effect of Adversarial Machine Learning Attack on IoT-enabled Industrial Control Systems

Abstract

Machine Learning (ML)-based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) is an effective technology to automatically detect cyber attacks in the Internet of Things (IoT) dependent Industrial Control Systems (ICS). It is faster, more efficient, and can detect attacks without human intervention. However, ML-based IDSs have introduced another security threat called Adversarial Machine Learning (AML). An AML attack may cause severe industrial infrastructural and production damage resulting in substantial financial loss. This paper presents an exploratory analysis of initiating an AML attack using adversarial samples created using a Fast Gradient Sign Method (FGSM). The research presented in this paper has been conducted from a dataset generated from a full-fledged singular module of a power distribution industry controlled by IoT-enabled ICSs. We explored the AML attack on Gradient Boosting (GB) and Iterative Dichotomiser 3 (ID3) model and discovered the average classification accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-scores are 87%, 88%, 87.5%, and 87%, respectively. The AML attack reduces the average precision, recall, and F1-score by 20.5%, 20.5%, and 22.5%, respectively, when 50% perturbations are added to 10% samples.