Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

Experimental validation of a Bulk Built-In Current Sensor for detecting laser-induced currents

International audience—Bulk Built-In Current Sensors (BBICS) were developed to detect the transient bulk currents induced in the bulk of integrated circuits when hit by ionizing particles or pulsed laser. This paper reports the experimental evaluation of a complete BBICS architecture, designed to simultaneously monitor PMOS and NMOS transistors, under Photoelectric Laser Stimulation (PLS). The obtained results are the first experimental proof of the efficiency of BBICS in laser fault injection detection attempts. Furthermore, this paper highlights the importance of BBICS tapping in a sensitive area (logical gates) for improved laser detection. It studies the performances of this BBICS architecture and suggests modifications for its future implementation

Model-Based Cyber-Security Framework for Nuclear Power Plant

A model-based cyber-security framework has been developed to address the new challenges of cyber threats due to the increasing implementation of digital components in the instrumentation and control (I&C) system of modern nuclear power plants. The framework is developed to detect intrusions to pressurized water reactor (PWR) systems that could result in unnecessary reactor shutdown events due to out-of-range water levels of steam generators. The generation of potential attack scenarios demonstrated a process for identifying the most susceptible attack pathways and components in the I&C system. It starts with identifying two key I&C divisions of the modern AP1000 design related to the reactor trip functions, protection and safety monitoring system, and plant control system. The attack tree analysis is performed on the steam generator (SG) water level control system using the SAPHIRE 8.0.9 code. To quantify the system susceptibility to cyber-attack events, causing reactor trips, we propose sensitivity metrics to identify the low-order sets of components that may be compromised and the degree of perturbations needed for each component. The multi-path event tree (MPET) structures are developed to efficiently and intuitively display a large number of dominant or risk-significant attack scenarios instead of the traditional event trees representing minimal cut sets. A reduced order model (ROM) has been developed to efficiently represent the SG dynamics and facilitate the detection of potential cyber-attacks. The dynamic ROM is built on the energy balance equation for a single vertical boiling channel approximating a U-tube steam generator. The ROM provides an essential relationship connecting the reactor power, water level, and feedwater flow rate. An application programming interface (API) for the I&C systems serving as the interface between the RELAP5 system code and the ROM has been developed. A Kalman filtering based detection method has been proposed, providing optimal tracking of SG water level combining the uncertain simulation results with the observation data subject to statistical fluctuations. An observed plant state with significant deviation from the optimal system projection could then indicate potential intrusions into the system. Finally, a mitigation strategy considering the controller feedback is proposed to avoid the reactor trip due to attack on SG water level sensors. The worst-case attack within this issue space is defined, and the maximum delay time allowed for the mitigation is obtained.PHDNuclear Engineering & Radiological SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162955/1/gjunjie_1.pd

Multi-Layer Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience for Smart Grid

The smart grid is a large-scale complex system that integrates communication technologies with the physical layer operation of the energy systems. Security and resilience mechanisms by design are important to provide guarantee operations for the system. This chapter provides a layered perspective of the smart grid security and discusses game and decision theory as a tool to model the interactions among system components and the interaction between attackers and the system. We discuss game-theoretic applications and challenges in the design of cross-layer robust and resilient controller, secure network routing protocol at the data communication and networking layers, and the challenges of the information security at the management layer of the grid. The chapter will discuss the future directions of using game-theoretic tools in addressing multi-layer security issues in the smart grid.Comment: 16 page

SMART SECURITY MANAGEMENT IN SECURE DEVICES

International audienceAmong other threats, secure components are subjected tophysical attacks whose aim is to recover the secret information theystore. Most of the work carried out to protect these components generally consists in developing protections (or countermeasures) taken one byone. But this “countermeasure-centered” approach drastically decreasesthe performance of the chip in terms of power, speed and availability.In order to overcome this limitation, we propose a complementary approach: smart dynamic management of the whole set of countermeasuresembedded in the component. Three main specifications for such management are required in a real world application (for example, a conditionalaccess system for Pay-TV): it has to provide capabilities for the chip todistinguish between attacks and normal use cases (without the help of ahuman being and in a robust but versatile way); it also has to be basedon mechanisms which dynamically find a trade-off between security andperformance; all these mecanisms have to formalized in a way which isclearly understandable by the designer. In this article, a prototype whichenables such security management is described. The solution is based ona double-processor architecture: one processor embeds a representativeset of countermeasures (and mechanisms to define their parameters) andexecutes the application code. The second processor, on the same chip,applies a given security strategy, but without requesting sensitive datafrom the first processor. The chosen strategy is based on fuzzy logic reasoning to enable the designer to describe, using a fairly simple formalism,both the attack paths and the normal use cases. A proof of concept hasbeen proposed for the smart card part of a conditional access for Pay-TV,but it could easily be fine-tuned for other applications

Supervisory Control System Architecture for Advanced Small Modular Reactors

This technical report was generated as a product of the Supervisory Control for Multi-Modular SMR Plants project within the Instrumentation, Control and Human-Machine Interface technology area under the Advanced Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Research and Development Program of the U.S. Department of Energy. The report documents the definition of strategies, functional elements, and the structural architecture of a supervisory control system for multi-modular advanced SMR (AdvSMR) plants. This research activity advances the state-of-the art by incorporating decision making into the supervisory control system architectural layers through the introduction of a tiered-plant system approach. The report provides a brief history of hierarchical functional architectures and the current state-of-the-art, describes a reference AdvSMR to show the dependencies between systems, presents a hierarchical structure for supervisory control, indicates the importance of understanding trip setpoints, applies a new theoretic approach for comparing architectures, identifies cyber security controls that should be addressed early in system design, and describes ongoing work to develop system requirements and hardware/software configurations