Distributed Detection of Malicious Attacks on Consensus Algorithms with Applications in Power Networks: Preprint

Consensus-based distributed algorithms are well suited for coordination among agents in a cyber-physical system. These distributed schemes however suffer from their vulnerability to cyber attacks that are aimed at manipulating data and control flow. In this article, we present a novel distributed method for detecting the presence of such intrusions for a distributed multi-agent system following ratio consensus. We employ a Max-Min protocol to develop low cost, easy to implement detection strategies where each participating node identifies the intruder independently, eliminating the need for a trusted certifying agent in the network. The effectiveness of the detection method is demonstrated by numerical simulations on a 1000 node network to demonstrate the efficacy and simplicity of implementation.