# Analyzing Cyber-Physical Threats on Robotic Platforms +
## 4 Risk Assessment of the Robotic Platform
### Qualitative Assessment Results  
Along with the risk assessment, it is important to conduct a qualitative assessment. In this type of assessment, we assign one of three levels (i.e., low, moderate or high) for the likelihood and the impact of an attack. In this subsection, we discuss the risk assessment table generation, which summarizes the assessment process. The adversarial risk assessment template proposed in [48] is used. Table 1 presents the end result of the risk assessment process for the threats under study. Following, each item in Table 1 is discussed (for more details about those items, the reader is advised to refer to [48]):  
1. Threat Event: Refers to the threat that is currently being analyzed. 2. Threat Sources: Refer to the possible origins of the analyzed threat. According to [48], threat sources are classified into four categories: insiders, outsiders, trusted insiders, and privileged insiders. The threats considered in this paper require the attacker to be on the same network of the robot and the client. Hence, the attacker might be an insider or an outsider who hacked into the network. For example, in the case of a wireless network, an attacker can crack the WiFi password and get access to the network through many ways. The following three items are characteristics for the threat source. 3. Capability: This is the first characteristic of the threat source. An attacker with high capability is one who is well resourced and has high level of expertise. Due to the increasing interest in cyber-security, the number of highly capable threat sources is increasing, especially in scientific and research environments. The reader should note that integrity and availability attacks considered in this work, require traffic analysis and hacking skills. In addition, those attacks (except TCP SYN flood availability attack) target the application level of the client/robot connection, which requires the attacker to be knowledgeable in this area as well. Hence, the capability level of the threat source is ranked as high for all considered attacks except TCP SYN flood which can be initiated with moderate capability. 4. Intent: This is the second characteristic of the threat source. For the considered attacks, the adversary seeks to undermine critical functions of the system, which may result in physical damage by causing loss of integrity or availability. 5. Targeting: This is the third characteristic of the threat source. For the considered attacks, the adversary targets a specific mission or function for the robot or the user (i.e., the target of the attack is not random). 6. Relevance: This indicates how related the threat event is to the system under study. The relevance level could be one of the following: confirmed, expected, anticipated, predicted, possible, and not applicable. For example, if the threat event has already been observed in the system, then it is confirmed. Due to the lack of any evidence indicating that the considered threats happened on robot, we rank them as possible. 7. Likelihood of attack initiation: Refers to the probability that the adversary will initiate the attack. All threat events are ranked as moderate. 8. Severity of vulnerabilities: The analyzed integrity threat events leverage vulnerabilities in the data-link layer (through ARP spoofing) and the application layer in the communication link between the robot and the user. The same is true for the analyzed availability threat events that are based on MITM attack. On the other hand, the TCP SYN flood availability threatexploits vulnerabilities in the transport layer. According to the exposure, ease of exploitation, and the implemented security remediation against these vulnerabilities, we rank their severity as moderate. * Pervasiveness of predisposing conditions: The main predisposing condition of all considered threat events is for the attacker to be connected to the same network of victims (e.g., connect physically, crack WiFi password or be an insider).