Manipulation of Control is an industrial control system attack pattern where an adversary changes commands, setpoints, or process values without authorization. Instead of breaking a device outright, the attacker interferes with what the system is told to do, which can make robots, PLCs, or other OT assets behave in unsafe or unintended ways.
This matters because control integrity is central to availability, safety, and process quality. In real environments, the attack surface often includes remote access tools, engineering workstations, firmware update paths, and controller interfaces. A successful intruder may alter motion, hide the real state of a process, or gradually degrade operations while avoiding obvious alarms. Defenses focus on strong authentication, tight network segmentation, strict change control, logging, and validation of commands and process values before they reach the plant floor.