False Data Injection Attacks on Phasor Measurements That Bypass Low-rank Decomposition

This paper studies the vulnerability of phasor measurement units (PMUs) to false data injection (FDI) attacks. Prior work demonstrated that unobservable FDI attacks that can bypass traditional bad data detectors based on measurement residuals can be identified by detector based on low-rank decomposition (LD). In this work, a class of more sophisticated FDI attacks that captures the temporal correlation of PMU data is introduced. Such attacks are designed with a convex optimization problem and can always bypass the LD detector. The vulnerability of this attack model is illustrated on both the IEEE 24-bus RTS and the IEEE 118-bus systems.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to 2017 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm

Vulnerability Assessment of Large-scale Power Systems to False Data Injection Attacks

This paper studies the vulnerability of large-scale power systems to false data injection (FDI) attacks through their physical consequences. Prior work has shown that an attacker-defender bi-level linear program (ADBLP) can be used to determine the worst-case consequences of FDI attacks aiming to maximize the physical power flow on a target line. This ADBLP can be transformed into a single-level mixed-integer linear program, but it is hard to solve on large power systems due to numerical difficulties. In this paper, four computationally efficient algorithms are presented to solve the attack optimization problem on large power systems. These algorithms are applied on the IEEE 118-bus system and the Polish system with 2383 buses to conduct vulnerability assessments, and they provide feasible attacks that cause line overflows, as well as upper bounds on the maximal power flow resulting from any attack.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Assessing and augmenting SCADA cyber security: a survey of techniques

SCADA systems monitor and control critical infrastructures of national importance such as power generation and distribution, water supply, transportation networks, and manufacturing facilities. The pervasiveness, miniaturisations and declining costs of internet connectivity have transformed these systems from strictly isolated to highly interconnected networks. The connectivity provides immense benefits such as reliability, scalability and remote connectivity, but at the same time exposes an otherwise isolated and secure system, to global cyber security threats. This inevitable transformation to highly connected systems thus necessitates effective security safeguards to be in place as any compromise or downtime of SCADA systems can have severe economic, safety and security ramifications. One way to ensure vital asset protection is to adopt a viewpoint similar to an attacker to determine weaknesses and loopholes in defences. Such mind sets help to identify and fix potential breaches before their exploitation. This paper surveys tools and techniques to uncover SCADA system vulnerabilities. A comprehensive review of the selected approaches is provided along with their applicability