I am wondering about this for a long time. With the exponential raising of critical cyber-physical systems (CPS) in our all-day-life (cars, metro, UAVs, ships...), how would an attacker be able to exploit non-malicious faults (i.e. due to the ageing of a component or due to cost restriction or incompetence that may lead to memory bloating / leaking, data fragmentation ...) to create malicious faults?
I am trying to find some sources that would go in favor of my question, i.e. is it possible for an attacker to wait for non-malicious faults to occur in order to exploit them to launch an attack?
The example I have in mind is when you deal with both low assurance components (which have a non-malicious fault rate that may be high) and high assurance ones, where the non-malicious fault rate should be very low.
If you have a low assurance component, prone to fault, on the path of a high assurance one, is it possible for an attacker to exploit the natural faults of a low assurance component to break through the high assurance one?
The main sources I am finding are on fault attacks, which are attacks that provoke faults. I would like to know if there exist some sources on attacks provoked by faults, and if it is reasonable to think of this as a possible way for an attacker to break through a system.
edit: to be more clear, is it possible to use faults of a low assurance component to break through a high assurance one?