Synthesis of Dynamic Masks for Information-Theoretic Opacity in Stochastic Systems

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Udupa, Sumukha, Shi, Chongyang, Fu, Jie
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Udupa, Sumukha
Shi, Chongyang
Fu, Jie
author_facet Udupa, Sumukha
Shi, Chongyang
Fu, Jie
contents In this work, we investigate the synthesis of dynamic information releasing mechanisms, referred to as ''masks'', to minimize information leakage from a stochastic system to an external observer. Specifically, for a stochastic system, an observer aims to infer whether the final state of the system trajectory belongs to a set of secret states. The dynamic mask seeks to regulate sensor information in order to maximize the observer's uncertainty about the final state, a property known as final-state opacity. While existing supervisory control literature on dynamic masks primarily addresses qualitative opacity, we propose quantifying opacity in stochastic systems by conditional entropy, which is a measure of information leakage in information security. We then formulate a constrained optimization problem to synthesize a dynamic mask that maximizes final-state opacity under a total cost constraint on masking. To solve this constrained optimal dynamic mask synthesis problem, we develop a novel primal-dual policy gradient method. Additionally, we present a technique for computing the gradient of conditional entropy with respect to the masking policy parameters, leveraging observable operators in hidden Markov models. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we apply our method to an illustrative example and a stochastic grid world scenario, showing how our algorithm optimally enforces final-state opacity under cost constraints.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_10552
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Synthesis of Dynamic Masks for Information-Theoretic Opacity in Stochastic Systems
Udupa, Sumukha
Shi, Chongyang
Fu, Jie
Systems and Control
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
In this work, we investigate the synthesis of dynamic information releasing mechanisms, referred to as ''masks'', to minimize information leakage from a stochastic system to an external observer. Specifically, for a stochastic system, an observer aims to infer whether the final state of the system trajectory belongs to a set of secret states. The dynamic mask seeks to regulate sensor information in order to maximize the observer's uncertainty about the final state, a property known as final-state opacity. While existing supervisory control literature on dynamic masks primarily addresses qualitative opacity, we propose quantifying opacity in stochastic systems by conditional entropy, which is a measure of information leakage in information security. We then formulate a constrained optimization problem to synthesize a dynamic mask that maximizes final-state opacity under a total cost constraint on masking. To solve this constrained optimal dynamic mask synthesis problem, we develop a novel primal-dual policy gradient method. Additionally, we present a technique for computing the gradient of conditional entropy with respect to the masking policy parameters, leveraging observable operators in hidden Markov models. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we apply our method to an illustrative example and a stochastic grid world scenario, showing how our algorithm optimally enforces final-state opacity under cost constraints.
title Synthesis of Dynamic Masks for Information-Theoretic Opacity in Stochastic Systems
topic Systems and Control
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.10552