{"id":74,"date":"2025-09-11T06:13:47","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T10:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/?p=74"},"modified":"2025-09-11T06:13:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T10:13:47","slug":"modeling-physical-masquerade-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/2025\/09\/11\/modeling-physical-masquerade-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Modeling physical masquerade attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have formally defined the security problem of a
\nstealthy adversary masquerading as a properly functioning agent.\u00a0 perspectives from cybersecurity.<\/p>\n

We introduced the concept of physical masquerade attacks in the context of multi-agent path finding, where a compromised insider in a multi-agent system attempts to gain access into unauthorized, forbidden locations without being noticed; we coined the term deviation attack<\/em> for this type of malicious maneuver.<\/p>\n

\"An
An illustration of the multi-agent path finding problem in the presence of deviation attacks, and of our defense approach based on co-observations. The sensitive region is marked with S. Left: a traditional (minimal length) solution is not secure, since there exists a deviation attack for the square agent (dotted line).
Right: if we add the a constraint that agents need to observe each other in the middle of their paths, neither agent can reach the secure location without breaking with the expected observation schedule.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We provide a constraint-based formulation of multi-agent pathfinding that yields multi-agent plans that are provably resilient to physical masquerade attacks. This formalization leverages inter-agent observations to facilitate introspective monitoring to guarantee resilience. Furthermore, we have show that is important to distinguish between a cautious attacker<\/em> (i.e., an attacker that aims to avoid detection under every possible circumstance) and a bold attackers<\/em> (i.e., attackers that tolerate a risk of detection)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have formally defined the security problem of a stealthy adversary masquerading as a properly functioning agent.\u00a0 perspectives from cybersecurity. We introduced the concept of physical masquerade attacks in the context of multi-agent path finding, where a compromised insider in a multi-agent system attempts to gain access into unauthorized, forbidden locations without being noticed; we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11510,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11510"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/securingmas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}