The Security Implication of Multiple Observers in a Distributed System

Confidentiality is an often overlooked, yet crucial point in the security analysis of a system. infrastructures take for granted that confidentiality is maintained through obfuscation by dissemination of information. This dissemination does indeed maintain the confidentiality of the system when only a small portion of the information can be obtained by an outside observer. However, when multiple observers collaboratively make observations, the confidential information can be revealed or even just partially revealed. If a team of attackers on a system can deduce enough information to successfully perform a crippling attack, the system could not be considered secure. This paper will bring together facets of graph theory, electrical physics, and statistics to illustrate how a team of attackers could compromise a partially deducible system. The infrastructure considered in this paper is a power transmission systems, but these techniques could be applied to any system which could be modeled as a resistance network; including traffic systems, oil and gas pipelines, or even a large scale computer network.