Assessing the Effect of Cyber-Physical Attacks on Water Distribution Systems

Modern water distribution systems (WDSs) largely depend on computer networks and industrial control systems for monitoring and operational purposes. Although the adoption of these cyber-physical components has improved the reliability and quality of service, such progressive computerization may render WDSs vulnerable to cyber and cyber-physical attacks. The spectrum of potential threats is very broad, with several attacks able to cause the disclosure of critical information or service disruption at different levels—a water supply interruption, for instance. These attacks usually target the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system—i.e., the centralized computer system supervising the whole infrastructure—or the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that locally operate pumps and valves. In this work, we introduce an EPANET-based toolbox that allows simulating the effects of cyber-physical attacks on a WDS. Plausible attack scenarios to network SCADA and PLCs are implemented in EPANET to simulate the response of a large WDS and assess how it diverges from normal operating conditions.