Querying Attack-Fault-Defense Trees: Property Specification in Smart Grid and Aerospace Case Studies

2025-06-30

AI Summary

Modeling the intricate interplay among security, safety, and defense in mission-critical systems (e.g., smart grids, aerospace) remains challenging, particularly due to difficulties in formalizing domain-specific analysis goals and eliciting expert knowledge intuitively. Method: This paper introduces AFDL—a unified formal logic integrating attack, fault, and defense behaviors—and LangAFDL, a domain-specific language built atop templated syntax to lower adoption barriers. AFDL supports Boolean and quantitative queries as well as minimal cut-set analysis; LangAFDL enables readable specification and automated verification of cross-domain safety properties. The approach synergizes attack-fault-defense tree semantics, DSL engineering, and logical reasoning. Results: Evaluated on two real-world case studies—GridShield and Ground Segment-as-a-Service (GSaaS)—AFDL and LangAFDL demonstrate expressive power and practical utility, establishing a scalable, automated theoretical and tooling foundation for collaborative safety analysis in mission-critical systems.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Security
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Description Logics

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

This paper introduces AFDL, a logic-based framework for reasoning about safety, security, and defense interactions in Attack-Fault-Defense Trees, which is a model that captures all safety, security, and defense domains in a single framework. We showcase both AFDL and propose a structured domain specific query language, LangAFDL, which enables domain experts to express complex analysis goals through intuitive templates. LangAFDL supports both Boolean and quantified queries as well as minimal cut set analysis, capturing the interplay between safety, security, and defensive measures. We illustrate the expressiveness and utility of the approach through representative queries over two different real-world case studies: Gridshield and Ground Segment as a Service. The formalization lays the automated safety-security groundwork for analyses in mission-critical systems and paves the way for future tool development and integration into design workflows.

Problem

• Modeling safety-security-defense interactions in Attack-Fault-Defense Trees
• Enabling domain experts to specify complex analysis queries intuitively
• Automating safety-security analysis for mission-critical systems like smart grids

Innovation

• AFDL logic framework for safety-security-defense analysis
• LangAFDL query language for domain experts
• Automated minimal cut set analysis integration